Above: Concorde El Salam resort in Sharm.
Enjoying the resort
I wanted to make the most of the resort before we move on to Cairo. I was in the water at 0715 but a leaky goggle cut my swim short.
After a big buffet breakfast, we packed and returned to the outdoors to enjoy the pool. Due to a miscommunication, Kim swam in the sea instead.
Kim’s ears were blocked yesterday and today. Both of us have some stings on our bodies.
We managed to wrangle a late checkout till 1300 and ate a light lunch of filled rolls that we nicked from breakfast.
At check-out our hotel bill was pleasantly less than we expected as they seemed to not have applied the taxes at 24%. The savings came to about USD90 which was approximately all the extras that we had charged to the room, in the form of meals and laundry.
Flying to Cairo
We took a pre-arranged complimentary shuttle to Sharm’s airport nearby. Security checks included an inspection of the underside of the vehicle by mirror.
The airport was being renovated and fitted with aluminium cladding. Our check-in struck a glitch when we were told that our reservations had been cancelled due to not having reconfirmed. I don’t recall Egypt Air still requiring reconfirmations but having worked in the travel industry, this happens when the ticket numbers have not been correctly transmitted from the agent’s system to the airline’s.
We were told that we should be OK as there were about ten seats left onboard and they would take us once check-in had closed. Sure enough, about 30 mins before departure, we were given our boarding passes.
We boarded by remote gate fifteen minutes prior to departure and took off on time. The Boeing 737-500 interior décor no longer had stars on the blue carpet, imitating the pattern in pharaonic tombs . But it could well have been a leased aircraft as it didn’t have the normal Egypt Air livery.
Cairo revisited
We landed at Cairo, the City of A Thousand Minarets, close to sunset at 1625. We took a limo taxi to the Nile Hilton where we had booked in at an awesome earlybird rate of USD55 + 19% tax per night. The oldies who chose to come on the trip later had to pay USD90 + 22% tax but included a buffet breakfast. The differing rates and pre-paid/post-paid bookings caused some delays at check-in.
The hotel was a complete contrast to our humble visit to Cairo twelve years ago when we roughed it. We got rooms overlooking the city rather than the Nile. We took dinner in the hotels’ foodcourt. The Thai green curry was awesome, as was the sizzling Mexican.
After dinner, we took a walk on the Corniche. Embarassingly, we needed to get help from a cop to cross the busy road whereas locals were taking it all in their stride. While the traffic seemed dangerous I thought it had mellowed since our firsts visit. I may have been wrong as it picked up after locals broke the fast of Ramadhan.
We were accosted by a horse-carriage driver. To appease him we agreed to a ride, taking a large rectangular route encompassing Gezira Island. We then explored the commercial of areas of Talaat Harb and Kasr el Nil where many airline offices and posher businesses were located.
We took a peek into Felfela Restaurant which we suspect gave us food poisoning twelve years ago before we hopped on the overnight train to Luxor. On our walks in Luxor’s Corniche, we got to know every nice hotel’s lobby loo.
Cairo surprised us when we took a taxi back to our hotel. The quoted fare of EGP10 was just that. Twelve years ago it would have turned into USD10 or EGP10 per person! The driver even said “Thanks”!
I like the new Cairo. It has also been cleaned up a lot and has a bit of greenery around too.