Walk Like An Egyptian!

So now I have the time, here's the start of my Egyptian Adventure. I'll post every couple of days the next part of the tale with pictures, rather than give you a total run down in one:-

Day One - Departure
So the adventure started at 7:30am on Thursday 29th November, when my oldest brother took me and my best friend Claire to East Midlands Airport to catch our flight. It was freezing! not helped by the fact we'd dressed so as to be comfortable when we arrived in Egypt, so our first stop after check in was the coffee shop for hot drinks and breakfast! Well, you all know how boring departure lounges really are, so after a little over 2 hours of chatting - one two many coffees and a really numb bum we finally began boarding the plane. So far so good.

5 and a bit hours later, having flown through/over a stunning sunset we landed in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt - bring on the holiday! having cleared customs, handed over visa cards and made our way to collect our luggage we were in high spirits and ready to get on board ship, sadly things went a little awry at this point. The luggage took an hour to reach the belt from the plane and then we had to join the back end of a VERY long line to board our coaches- the reason for it? well, the gossip in the line was that the ship wasn't even in port and they were shipping us out to hotels in the area - what?no!

The gossip was all rubbish! thankfully, but we did have a long 2 hours from the airport to reaching our cabin. It turned out that the ship had been delayed by port authorities the day before and that it had only arrived in Sharm about 2 hours before our flight had landed. All the passengers on board at had thus missed their flights and they were been put up in hotels over night as Thomson rearranged their flights home, at the same time they had put the early arriving flights from the UK into 2 of the local hotels for complimentary drinks and dinner whilst they cleaned and emptied the ship. All in all - the crew were having a tough time of it, whist we - on the other hand - just had to stand chatting, sit on a coach and accept refreshments whilst standing in line to get our onboard cards and photos sorted. Whilst many of our fellow passangers were in full scale rant mode by this point, Claire and I were steadily becoming more excited again and by the time we reached our cabins? well it was 10:30pm their time (Egypt is 2 hours ahead) and we were ready to start the holiday in style - bring on the cocktails!

Our home for the week - Thomson Celebration

After a quick supper (where we were presented with paper roses from our waiters - aww!) we headed out on deck to join the party already in full swing - the cocktails kept coming, the crew kept us laughing and our feet didn't stop dancing - with Claire being informed by a show team member (we later discoved he was called Alistair) threatening to throw her in the pool if she sat down - until the early hours of the next morning - it was a night that pre-defined how we would be spending the remainder of our evenings on board - through we didn't know it at the time! So the holiday had really begun and as we moved out to the sea to travel overnight, we looked forward to what the following day would have in store and prayed we wouldn't be suffering too badly from sleep deprivation and cocktail consumption!

Our Room - (much bigger than the picture shows)

Our Rose's - Awww!

Next time - 4x4 Adventures and Oh my!