Last night I arrived home from a lovely week long relaxing holiday in Egypt. I've always wanted to visit Egypt, everything to do with Egyption history absolutely fascinates me and I'm obsessed with the idea of visiting the pyramids and such. We were nowhere near Cairo and there's trouble there at the moment anyway so we didn't go site seeing or visit them. Really it was just a last minute deal to Egypt for a relaxing holiday but it was amazing!
Generally we spent our days sunbathing by the pool ; napping, reading, listening to music and going for a dip in the pool and to the swim up bar. We'd then have lunch and do it all over again! The absolute perfect way to enjoy the boiling hot weather :)
On Tuesday we visited another sensatori hotel and went on a tour of it. My sister and the other ladies I went with all work for Thomson and this other hotel was also a Thomson hotel so where they'd spent the last few months designing the brochure for it, they were intrigued to see what the hotel was actually like in person. It was stunning ; it was five star so it was all very exclusive and high-end, most of the rooms had their own individual swim up pool and a jacuzzi too. The spa was beautiful, it was situated at the very top of the hotel so it had amazing views. The fitness aspects of the hotel were also pretty amazing too, you had so many options of ways to keep fit and healthy including things like yoga on the beach at sunrise and things like that. Amazing!
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| Beach tent things at the sensatori - what I'd do to live there! |
On Wednesday was one of the best days where we went on a Sinai By Starlight excursion. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever done in my life and something that was totally up my street. We left the hotel pretty early and got a coach into the middle of the desert where we then had a camel ride further into the desert. Now I wasn't sure what to expect, I was excited but I'd never really had much um experience with camels in the past. It was scary. Very scary. They were all making loads of really scary noises and camels are a LOT bigger than you expect them to be. Once you climb on they get up by kind of leaning down and getting up with their back legs first followed by their front legs - it's hard to explain but you end up all over the place and it's really scary. In fact I almost backed out as I really didn't like the idea of it! There was a camera man filming the whole excursion and we bought the DVD and you can see me on the camel as it gets up. You can see the absolute fear in my face, haha! Once I was up and moving though I was okay...until half an hour later it came to getting off the camel in the same fashion and as it dropped to the floor I was so scared I screamed! Everyone looked at me and laughed!
After that weird experience we all went into a bedrin tent and drank some Egpytion tea and had/tried a shisha which was interesting! We also learned a bit about the history around where we were before watching the sunset in the mountains.
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| Sunset among the mountains in the Egyption desert - stunning! |
Then we had some food, made some bread and some men did some traditional dance thing and got all us ladies up to dance too. After that we wandered into the desert with a professional astronomer who gave us a talk about stars and the solar system - stars, planets and constellations we could see and such. It was beautiful, of course in the middle of the desert the sky is 100% clear so it was a really beautiful site. We also looked through some telescopes and saw Saturn up close - so close that you could see the rings around it - and the actual surface of the moon! I was astounded! We managed to take some photos through the telescope though the Saturn photo just looks like a blob, ha!
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| Saturn |
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| The surface of the moon |
Anything to do with the solar system fascinates me so it was really a truly amazing experience for me.
We got up to various stuff during the rest of our holiday - I ended up DJing at one of the club nights there which was funny! We pretty much hosted this night to be honest - we got everyone up dancing, making up all these new dance moves, putting on awesome music and getting everyone involved! We also very nearly won the quiz night (we came second by ONE point). One night I remember being particularly funny was when we were really tired and planned to get a cup of tea and head to bed - in the end we ended up still in the bar at 1am making our way through the cocktail list with the aim to try each one!
I had mixed thoughts on the hotel. It was pretty beautiful - the reception had all marble floors and a stunning staircase that curled around a waterfall feature and a bridge at the bottom. We named it death bridge as it had loads of ridges in it and was impossible to walk over in heels. The grounds were stunning too - loads of flowers, water features and cute wooden bridges. The pools were SO nice as well. However, some of the rooms needed to be made a bit more modern - you could see where parts of the hotel could do with a makeover and the staff were actually a bit dodgy/rude. One of them even smashed a glass on the floor in a huff when they messed up our drinks order ha! The food was pretty bland too - it was all inclusive - but it was very repetitive and by the end of the holiday we couldn't face it and walked into town to have food elsewhere.
However it was just a really lovely way to relax and spend some time to myself before my new job. I've added some more random photos below.
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| Me DJing! The DJ added me on Facebook after this, ha! |
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| Me and my sister on the dodgy camels |
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| We did not, I repeat, we did NOT choose this pose ourselves! We asked some guy to take a photo of us and he started modeling us into all these different poses then insisted we had a photo with him too! So funny! |
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| Posing |
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| Janine, Claire and Sharon |
I had an amazing time and really enjoyed myself. By yesterday I was ready to come home though! My shoulders, neck and hairline (?) were burnt and our flight was at a ridiculous time of the night. Ricky from TOWIE was at the airport though and everyone started fangirling over him - one of the girls sat near us even got his number! The flight was horrible too - three screaming babies in the aisle next to us and horrible girls sat behind us trying to cause trouble. We didn't get in till 4:30 am and I felt like a zombie by the time I got in!
I hope you all had a lovely week and if this post hasn't already made it obvious, I would definitely recommend you all visit Egypt!
