I know, I know, I'm going backwards BUT I wanted to get the Happy New Year posted before Easter! Anyway, here is Christmas and hopefully one day I'll post something about Austria, Normandy and Switzerland. For now, it's Christmas!
We decided we wanted to go somewhere warm for Christmas. After sitting in the Travel Agents office for 3 hours looking at Canary Islands, Dubai, Turkey, South Africa, etc, etc, we decided on Egypt. Sharm El Sheik, Egypt to be exact. The whole itinerary was SUN, swimming, SUN, diving, SUN, snorkeling and most importantly, SUN. Well, the SUN never let us down. The sky was beautiful and full of SUN every day! We almost had it all until we found out a few days before departure that there were 5 shark attacks in the Red Sea. I knew I would never go in after that but Jon still had high hopes!
We stayed on an all-inclusive resort. It was fabulous. I didn't have to worry about what, when or where we were going to eat. I didn't have to clean up the table or do the dishes. I was in heaven!! In fact one day we were seaside eating some crepes and the kids made a HUGE mess with the powder sugar. I was a little embarrassed so I started cleaning it up when the waiter came over and said "Mom you do that at home, you DO NOT do it here!" Oh, I love that man and asked him if I could take him home!
We did venture off the reservation (as we call it) a couple of times. One time was to go to the city center where we saw a camel taxi. Oh it was so dang funny. The camel driver stopped and asked if we needed a ride. I told him "If you can get all of us on that Taxi I will pay you double just to see it!" He didn't think that was too funny and headed off to others in need of a ride.
Our other excursion was on a submarine in the Red Sea. We were able to go down and see all the coral and beautiful fish. We have done this before in Hawaii but the fish don't even compare! We saw so many large, colorful, weird looking fish!! So much better than Hawaii!!!
One thing that suprised us about Egypt is the mountains. Granted, there was no vegetation on the mountains but they were mountains. I guess there had to be, didn't Moses get the Ten Commandments from Mt. Sinai?
The resort tried their hardest to make it feel like Christmas time. Everything was decorated beautifully. There was a christmas tree, chocolate houses (which looked fabulous), palm tree trunks decorated like presents, reindeer, sleighs, lights, oh it looked great! For Christmas Eve, they had a special dinner with Turkey and all the helpings to go with. They really did a great job at making us feel like it was Christmas. The best was Christmas day. We were sitting by the pool when, low and behold, here comes Santa Claus on a Camel with a band playing Christmas Songs! It was hilarious. Just look at the picture of Santa and you will see what I'm talking about. We ended up calling him Scarey Claus because none of the kids dared go see him!
We had three days left of holiday when Jon decides he wants to go snorkeling. He went and bought the gear and went out the next morning. He came back saying he got kicked out of the water after about an hour but the fish were fantastic. I wanted to see for myself, so we went out again the next morning. I was so nervous. I don't like snorkeling but I really wanted to see the fish. I started walking down the stairs to get in the water when I saw HUGE crabs using the stairs also. I kept going (even tho the Jaws theme was playing in my head). I reached the water about knee length. Now remember, the water is super clear. You can see some fish from standing on the edge. Now back to my story, I was standing about knee length when along came a school of white fish with black stripes. They touched my legs, I screamed (loud) and ran out of the water as fast as I could. Yep, that is my experience of snorkeling in the Red Sea!!! Needless to say Jon was disgusted in me but enjoyed snorkeling anyway. He said the fish were very amazing. I will just take his word for it and say I saw them while safely in the submarine!
One last highlight of our trip was we came home with some new friends. While at our resort we met a dutch family who was celebrating their anniversary. They have three children just like us, a 12 yr old boy, 9 yr old girl and 5 yr old girl. We couldn't of asked for a better fit! The boys loved playing together and of course, the girls fit right together. The 12 yr old spoke great english so he was the interpreter for the rest. What really cracked us up was the little girls. Tally would speak english to Cathelijne and Cathelijne would speak back in dutch. They didn't know what each other was saying but it didn't stop them. I just watched in amazement as their friendship grew while speaking two different languages with no understanding. We are lucky because this family lives in Rotterdam. Only an hour from us. We have already planned on a reunion party and hope to see much more of them in 2011.
Overall Egypt was a 10 out of 10. We couldn't of asked for a better holiday!! After coming home with our sun kissed skin I said to Jon "Christmas should always be spent in the sun!"
