Sun 4th July.
Actually it's the morning bus to the airport to get the flight to Cairo, but you get the point.
We had a short coach ride to the airport and went thru security. They seem obsessed with checking for the little Visa sticker rather than checking that the picture or details match the owner... We could have had two heads and been carrying a large ticking bomb with "I'm a bomb" written on the side, and still got thru. It's prob cos the visa costs $15 per person... Its all about the money. Anyway if you go out of Sharm you need one, apparently.
Once checked in, we went thru security again and headed for the lounge.
There are only three things in the departure lounge: a tiny cafe, a smaller shop and the toilets. We grabbed a coffee and ham/cheese croissant with coffee for breakfast, which was actually quite nice. Sam went for a ciggie (holiday smoking only she assures me) and I checked out the "shop". They sell 5 different watches, 10 brands of ciggie, 15 brands of perfume and 50 types of chocolate. For a country that regularly exceeds 40 degrees, I can't help wondering about their choice of confectionery.
Our flight has been delayed from 6.15 til 7am, not huge but it is annoying and the only one delayed... Typical!
It's 8.30 and we landed ok. Just. I may be wrong but I think this scare-o-plane was being "driven" on manual. Take-off was so steep, I suspected Captain Birk was trying to shake the loose change from our pockets into a box at the back of the plane. We often turned, braked and accelerated very sharply, which I think was his attempt to keep us all awake to take note of his excellent airmanship. We were then served a carton of Pineapple juice and a packet of Date biscuits... Now people have told me about the Egyptian sense of humour but come on! We're foreign. We're not used to the food or water. So, everything we consume is a toilet-timebomb and they serve us two things that are well known for enhancing your ability to pee out of your bottom, through the eye of Cleopatra's needle (thought I'd keep it topical). Anyway, the flight was short and as we landed (way too fast) Captain Kangaroo bounced us all the way to the terminal, just to free up the last few Egyptian sheckles from our shirt pockets, and make sure the Pineapple juice and Date biscuits had mixed properly in our stomachs to reach their full potency.
We finally got out of the airport and onto our coach.
More in Part 2...
Bye for now!
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