Blogs from Egypt, Africa - page 5

Cairo-nothing more needs to be added, one of those places in this world that conjures up visions of ancient civilizations and cultures...the magical home of Pharaohs, Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and the Nile, could not wait to get exploring... Funny, Egypt was never really on our radar for some reason, it had come up in conversations over the years but never really stuck strangely enough...with international travel opening up we started chatting about where we should/could go, and unexpectedly we stumbled across an Intrepid tour that seemed to check all our boxes: majority of the major sites covered, small group, all sorts of modes of transportation (Planes, Trains and Automobiles! And buses, feluccas, Ubers, boats...lol...) and about twelve days which is a decent length. Tacking on some beach time on the Sinai Peninsula after the tour seemed ... read more

Luxor by lunch time, the temperature is in the range of the 45 degrees! So the trick here again is to wake up super early to enjoy a beautiful early morning. We are lucky, most sites around Luxor do open at 6am. This means an early 5am wake up call to be ready by the gate of sites at 6am. Most tourist buses only show up around 7.30am, so we have nearly each day sites just for ourselves. We are spending two nights in Luxor. First day was a train arrival just on time for dinner. We are staying at the Winter Palace run by Sofitel. This is the poorer sister of the Old Catarat in Aswan. One more time, a top upgrade in the third best suite of the house...with a very nice private terrace ... read more

Our adventures carry on in Egypt. Well after arriving yesterday at Port Said and having to give all our passports over even if we were not getting off the ship and then being allowed to get them back - this Egyptian passport fiasco is getting a bit annoying. Anyway this morning we decide that we are going to have a stroll around Port Said. What can I say about Port Said. Well the streets are really disgusting with glass, rubble and just general rubbish so not a good start there to be honest. We walk around a corner and there is a church and if there is a church there is Eric wanting to go inside. Now normally that would not be a problem in most countries but we are in Egypt. We should have known ... read more

Well its day 3 in Hurghada and we should be off to the ship later on today but before I go into this - have you ever felt a real plonka well,I feel a first class plonka. So I hear there are mosquitos so I come prepared as normally Mike is like a dart board for mosquitos, they love him and not only try to get a 180 they try to get every tile on the board. Anyway, I digress so I buy mosquito repellant and whilst picking this up from boots I see a bite relief click it gadget - thinking never seen this before. So last night I got bitten by one of those little bugger mosquitos on my leg - so think ohhh now I can try that gadget I got. So get ... read more

So get to the airport early as we saw the chaos at Manchester airport on the news - well that was a mistake as like us well nearly a full plane of people did the same and we had to wait until the Tel-Aviv passengers had checked in. So there were hundreds of passengers waiting for the Hurghada flight check in. Well Easy Jet check in is non existent of check in people as you have to do it yourself. i.e. you have to print your own baggage labels attach them to your bag and then put your bag on the conveyor and send the bag down. I did this but put the identifying luggage slip on the bar code of Mike’s boarding card - well after steam had left his head and he shouted at ... read more