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Published: January 21st 2012
Savoy Hotel
Enjoying the sunAfter seemingly spending all of December and January (so far) in the rain and chill we decided to head off for some sun; this time in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.We flew from Birmingham after a 6.15am departure from Cardiff. The flight took 5 hours and we arrived at Sharm el Sheikh at 6pm local time. Our hotel, the Savoy, is located only 6 kms from the airport so we were checked-in by 7pm local time and then went out for a meal at one of the restaurants in the pedestrian mall outside the front entrance of the hotel. All very easy though the temperature was rather cooler than we had expected.
Friday 13
th January: After a leisurely breakfast we looked round our hotel, the Savoy, which is very nice consisting of sprawling low rise accommodation with it’s own private beach, 3 or 4 swimming pools and 5 restaurants (you can check it out at
www.savoy-sharm.com). The hotel seems to be less than half full but still has quite a large number of guests, mostly Brits and Russians and a sprinkling of other nationalities including Egyptians. In the afternoon we took the hotel shuttle bus to have a look
Savoy Beach
Tiran Island in the back ground at Namaa Bay which is the main tourist area of Sharm el Sheikh, about 5 miles from our hotel. It turned out to be heavily over commercialised and noisy and not to our liking, so after a late lunch we took a taxi back to our hotel rather than wait for the shuttle. Sharm el Sheikh is essentially a purpose built tourist resort stretching along the shore of the Gulf of Aqaba for approximately 15 kms/10 miles. The beaches are small and nearly are all privately owned by the hotels which stretch almost continuously along the low cliffs. The main attraction here is the very clear water and the vibrant sea life, so scuba diving and snorkelling are the main activities. However it’s too cold for us to want to go swimming or snorkelling so for us tennis at our hotel’s courts is our recreation.
Saturday & Sunday: Our routine is breakfast, tennis, lunch, reading and out to dinner in the pedestrian precinct just outside the hotel’s main gate where there are a variety of restaurants and cafés where we can charge meals and drinks to our hotel room; and get a 25% discount on the menu price.
Monday 16
th January: Cairo - Having booked a trip to Cairo this required us to get up at 4am for a 4.50 am pick-up from the hotel. The hotel provided us with “breakfast boxes” and we were then taken to the airport for our 6am flight to Cairo. The journey from the hotel to the airport took only 15 minutes so when we arrived there we had enough time to check out our breakfast boxes which contained: 3 large polystyrene containers containing 5 large baguettes, cakes and croissants, along with 2 date biscuits, 2 bananas, 2 oranges, 2 fruit juices and 2 bottles of water: altogether about 10,000 calories and enough to feed a family of 4 for a week. We sampled a small portion of this gargantuan meal then our flight called. The flight to Cairo took only 45 minutes and we were met there by a large comfortable coach which took our party of approximately 15 people to our first destination the EgyptianMuseum in downtown Cairo; next to Tahrir Square where the demonstrations that toppled the Egyptian Government took place. The journey from the Airport to the Museum was an interesting introduction to the Cairo traffic which is,
to put it mildly, chaotic. The main roads are very wide but there’s a huge volume of traffic and no lane discipline at all (Note: petrol in Egypt costs about 9 pence per litre and that plus limited public transport and a population in the Greater Cairo area of around 20 million accounts for the massive numbers of cars on the roads). Fortunately our driver Mohamed was brilliant, handling the large coach as though it was a motor bike, weaving back and forth across the highway within inches of other vehicles. On the way to the Museum we passed two traffic accidents; nothing serious just minor collisions and I noticed that the majority of the cars on the roads showed signs of collision damage, mostly sideswipes.
We arrived at the Egyptian Museum after about an hour’s drive. Our excellent tour guide Ash arranged the entrance fees and took our cameras off us as they’re not allowed inside the Museum. The 2 hour tour of the Museum was great and included the wonderful exhibition of King Tut’s treasure which alone was worth the trip to Cairo. After the Museum tour we piled back on the coach and were taken to
Cairo Traffic
Hitting a Police lorry might not be a very smart thing to do the banks of the Nile for a cruise; which turned out to be a miserable experience because it was very windy and cold, and there was a haze over the city. Afterwards our hypothermically challenged group returned to the coach and were taken across one of the Nile bridges for lunch at a riverbank restaurant which turned out to be rather mediocre. Then back on the coach and another drive through the crazy Cairo traffic to the Pyramids. No picture can do proper justice to these amazing structures. The smallest of the three pyramids is just about on a normal human scale in that you can envisage someone (e.g. a meglomaniac) building such a huge monument to himself; but the largest of the three, the Great Pyramid of Cheops, , defies belief. It would represent a massive challenge even using today’s engineering technology and equipment, but to construct a symmetrically perfect pyramid, 480 foot high, with a base area of 13 acres, using 2.3 million blocks of precision cut stone and complete it within 20 years, over 4,000 years ago is amazing. Another bonus was that a pharoh’s funerary barge has recently been discovered near the Great Pyramid and is
now on display in a special building next to the Pyramid. Afterwards we were taken to have a look at the Sphinx which was a bit of an anticlimax coming after the overwhelming pyramids.
Our last stop was at a papyrus factory where we saw how papyrus was made and its impressive properties. Then we headed back through the dusk and crazy traffic to Cairo Airport and the flight back to Sharm el Sheikh; arriving there at 8.30 p.m. A very full, very memorable day: very cold but well worth it.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: We reverted to our previous routine of eat, tennis, read, eat out and bed. On Thursday the wind had picked up and the temperature dropped although it was still very pleasant to sit in the sun provided one was sheltered from the wind. As it happens the most useful bits of kit that we brought with us are my fleece jacket and Jane’s down jacket which are needed in the evenings when we go out for dinner.
Ps Sorry for not getting this blog out sooner but the internet service at the hotel has been down for several days.
Cairo Museum 2
The grey building in the background was looted and burned during the anti Government demonstrations
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Frogophile Butters
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Sphynx
There is an old rubgy song, handed down from generation to generation, which explains the inscrutable smile on the Sphynx's face. The explanation itself in turn provokes an inscrutable smile on the faces of the singers, and so it is perpetuated. Still in Paris, putting up with the drizzle. Low point of the day : lying on my hotel bed, nursing a heavy cold. High point : couscous at the Roi de Couscous just round the corner - vaut le détour. C