Day 3: Start off by the Red Sea and end at an Irish Bar

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Woke up early and tried not to wake up my roommate who had gotten back just 2 hours before. I went down to the hotel lobby and saw the mentally disturbed lady was still there interacting with some children. She was still locked in and would be leaving that day. I am honestly not sure why her family would just leave her at the hotel. I found out that fact from the hotel staff.

I sat at a table and typed out my blog for the day and let people back home that I was doing alright. After this I went out to the beach and stepped into the Red sea for the first time. After that I went to breakfast. I sat with Carey and we talked about the events of last night. Everyone had drank a lot and I found out a few people had stayed up to 4AM and they actually managed to convince the hotel staff to sell them some beer after the midnight cutoff. Breakfast was omelets and various other breads, fruits and other assorted. The omelets weren't large but you can compensate by getting more than 1.

I decided to take a dip in the pool and the red sea. For the record I can't swim. I tried to learn when I was younger but I was terrible at the lesson. I figure I could at least get wet. I met up with Carey, Stephan, and Emily and we all went to get towels. They give you a separate card for your towels and they are serious about that because they will charge you 150 Egyptian pounds if you don't return that card. Our tour leader Zizo gave a strong warning about that. The 4 of us went into the Red sea. It was a private beach so only the hotel guests were there. The Red sea was ok. It was salty and the ground was bit slippery and rocky. After the Red sea we went to a nearby pool and met up with others from the group. The hotel actually has some entertainment by the pool including water exercises and a dance routine that some of the staff did. Thanks to our wrist bands we got free drinks at the swim up bar and we were able to drink them at the pool. We spent a bit of time swimming and we did some photo bombing while in the pool.

We were due to check out at noon and I went back to the hotel around 11AM. I wasn't really paying attention and when I went into the hotel something was different. I went up to my room and something was wrong because my key didn't work. I went down to the reception and the guy looked at me funny and told me I was in the wrong hotel. Apparently the beach and pool area is shared by several hotels and I had wandered into the wrong one 😊. Amused, I went outside and walked back to my hotel and gathered my stuff. We checked out of the hotel and went to lunch. Nothing much to say about lunch but around this time one of our tour mates Kait was feeling fairly sick. She would be the first one to be sick. She was able to get some medications from other people and would feel better by that night.

Now it was time for the 6 hour drive to Luxor. It was a hot drive to Luxor but we made good time. One interesting moment during ride, we got to watch a prisoner transfer. It was a heavily guarded moment and traffic was stopped in all directions for it. We passed through many small villages along the way and I noticed every one of them had 1 guy who was armed. Zizo explained to us every village had a security official appointed by the police.

We checked into our hotel in Luxor, Hotel Steinberg and than went to a nearby Irish restaurant for dinner. Murphy's Irish bar usually has Murphy's beer from Ireland but due to various import issues they only had local beers. We had some choices for dinner but I opted for Chicken and Vegetables on a kabob. It was very good and I am glad I chose it. With dinner we drank local beers including Stella and Sakarra. I will say I did enjoy the local beers and I was amused by the fact there was Guinness and Murphy's advertisement everywhere but not the beers themselves. We ended the night early as we had an early start tomorrow. On the way back a number of Egyptian men made advancements on the women in our group including offering numbers and shouting obscenities. The ladies walked right on by and we got back to our hotel. Tomorrow it would be the Hot Air Balloon at sunrise

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