Leaving Egypt

Josh and I got up early and went for a final swim in the Red Sea. The water is incredibly clear here and the marine life abundant. You run into fish even if you don’t mean to. When we got back to the room, a sleepy Avery was just climbing into our bed. Shortly thereafter Olivia was up too. She and Avery watched some TV, while we packed. Charlotte has been packing and unpacking her own stuff on this trip which has been a big help, but I should have given her lessons first on how to do so efficiently (ie lay the clothes as flat as possible instead of wadding them up into balls).

We enjoyed our last breakfast and the beautiful views. It was time to go. The drive to the airport took a little longer than we’d expected because of the inspection by the tourist police. I failed to mention that all over Egypt, everywhere you go – whether it’s in or out of your hotel, to see a temple or monument, or to enter a tourist zone within a town or city – there are security checkpoints. Many armed soldiers always asking where you are from and where you are going. Of course, this mainly went on behind the scenes since they’d deal, in Arabic, with our driver or guide. Today, we had to fill out forms with our names, passport numbers and nationalities and present this information to the tourist police in order to get permission to leave. Our rep. told us this is only necessary for Americans. In any case, the delay made it so that we’d arrive at the airport just in time to get through security, check-in and walk up to get on our flight…except that after we arrived, our flight was delayed.

Fortunately, with a scheduled four hour lay-over in Cairo, we could relax. And we did. Olivia and Avery watched a movie with a new friend they’d made at the airport, a little girl who lives in Alexandria - she speaks Arabic, French, English and German (Arabic mother and German father). Charlotte started re-reading Breaking Dawn, the 700 page book she’d finished earlier on the trip (she read two books during the holiday - over 1300 pages!). The airport in Sharm El Sheikh is nice, and new and so we were happy to spend the extra time there as opposed to Cairo. Eventually, we boarded our flight and made the short journey to Cairo – with great views over Saudia Arabia and the Sinai, including Dahab, just after departure.

After we collected our luggage, our rep met us in Cairo and we were shuttled over to the international terminal. While the domestic terminal was spotless and new, the international terminal was a dump. We had just enough time to sit down and have a slice of pizza before queuing up to board our Alitalia flight back to Rome.

Thankfully, the flight was uneventful. When we landed in Rome and switched on our cell phones, both Josh and I could see that we had received a call from Luca, Charlotte's swim coach. He also sent Josh a text. Instead of leaving for Grosseto tomorrow at 9am as we were told, the team bus would be leaving this afternoon at 4:30pm. So Italian! It was now 8:30pm so clearly, Charlotte had missed the bus! We'd have to figure this one out after we get home.

After we arrived at Michele Mercati, and the kids were all in bed, Josh asked if I wanted to open a bottle of wine? Anything Italian! Looking around, our only option was a bottle of prosecco in the fridge. So I made us each a spritz! We were online reading emails and having a cocktail. It was good to be home.