Day One

Wilson would love travelling in this!

When I realised I was going to be able to go with Peter on his annual winter holiday in the sun (Nobody wants their garden done in January) I was so excited to be going back to Egypt. This time we needed to rest and recover from our virus that still has not gone, and I need to try and get stronger, to get my ME back under some kind of control and to beat this Sinus infection and Neuralgia that are causing me so much pain!

As we had seen lots of sights on our last visit, and since we have been so ill, we decided just to have two weeks resting beside the Red Sea in Sharm El Sheikh. Peter has been to Egypt 3 times before and on his first visit he was recovering from a big operation and needed to rest in the sun, and so chose a nice looking hotel by the beach, as opposed to the back-packers 2-star places we often chose.  On holidays we normally spend most of our days out and about exploring the local area. We were looking for last minute deals, so when we found a good deal for the hotel he stayed in the first time he was here, we snapped it up. There is not a lot to do in Sharm except swim and sunbathe, so we packed lots of books, suncream and our snorkels 🙂

The flight was good, 4 1/2 hours is long, but I kept “The Life of Pi” to read & it was such a good book it kept me engaged the whole flight. I can’t imagine how the film could portray the book properly at all? It is a brilliantly written, funny, heartbreaking truly imaginative book, and although I couldn’t wait to get to the end, I was sad when the story was over. I still want to know what happened next.

The book starts with the author as the narrator explaining how the book came about, and it is interjected at times with the author’s comments about meeting the protagonist, however what I want to know now, having finished the book, is the author’s conclusion about the story, and a bit more about the life of the protagonist since the episode described, until the present day. There could be no sequel, but the characters were so real, that I am left wanting to know more about their lives subsequent to the events in the book.

My first visit to Egypt was on our honeymoon in April 2011. We went to Cairo and then on a 17 day tour of Egypt, starting with a few days on our own exploring Cairo, taking in visits to the Step Pyramid and bent pyramid at Saqqara (and our first experience of being hustled onto a camel!) We visited the Pyramids in Giza and the Sphinx, the mandatory perfume and papyrus shops and a trip to the old city, and the Coptic Christian area.

We spent an evening exploring the Kahn El Khaliili Bazaar and spent a half a day at the Egyptian Museum. I think if you lived in the Museum it would still take you a year to take in all the exhibits! As it was we just did a whistle-stop tour visiting all the famous exhibits until information overload & exhaustion took over & we had to leave.  We couldn’t take any photos in the museum, but I thought that the ‘Weeping Angels‘ episode of Dr Who was inspired by Tutankhamon´s Sarcophagus, so found a photo of it when I got home to see if others agreed?

Below are (yes) a select few of the photos I took in Cairo! Click on any of them to see larger versions

Part 2, Aswan and Abu Simbel  shortly……