July 27 - Egypt: Na'ama Bay - the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt 

So tonight we catch our (very loooooong) flight to India.  I'm feeling better.  Not fabulous, but better.  But I'm ready to travel, which is really all that matters.  Despite the potential trauma of the hair-coloring episode last night, my husband Vidal Sasoon did an outstanding job on my newly blond hair.  It has just a touch of reddish tint to it, and I think it's pretty cool.  Especially as I envisioned it coming out green.

We went down to breakfast, and I had some bread and juice.  Our flight to Cairo doesn't leave until 10:00PM tonight, so we checked with the Falcon Hotel to see what kind of a late checkout we could arrange.  It turns out that they're booked for tonight, so we can only have until 2:00PM to lay around.  

Now - you may ask yourself - what does one do when it's 100+° outside, an impending all-night flight in 8 hours, and no shower for at least 24 hours?  Well, you of course go to the air-conditioned Hard Rock Cafe!

For 3 hours.

I'm not kidding.  We sat down and ordered drinks and read.  Then we ordered an appetizer and read.  Then we ordered lunch and read.  And then we ordered a chocolate-brownie sundae and read.  The waiter didn't mind - for a while we were the only customers in the place.  But it was air conditioned, comfortable, and the music was good so we were happy.  Around 6:00, we finally left and headed over to the Internet Cafe to waste more time (and money). Then we stopped by the Nike and Adidas stores to find me a new pair of Tevas because mine aren't going to survive much longer.  But no luck.  By now, it was 7:30 and we still had a half hour to kill before we could rationalize leaving.  So we went to McDonald's for a soda.  (Note that the presence of air conditioning is key in these dramatic choices of locations).  

At 8:00, we picked up our bags from the hotel and caught a cab to the Sharm El Sheikh airport.  The taxi driver was very nice, and we're honestly very sad to be leaving Na'ama Bay.  Our driver was trying to get us to promise to come back again, but who knows?  The Red Sea is glorious, but there are lots of other dive sites we haven't been to yet.

At the airport, we were there two hours early for our flight to Cairo but that's OK because Egypt Air (the pathetic airline that it is) doesn't assign seats until check-in so at least we can be snag decent seats.  We boarded our 10:00 flight and landed in Cairo around 11:00 PM.  Then we had to pick up our bags, check into the flight to India, and clear customs.  Easier said than done.  As I was waiting for our luggage (which were of course LAST off the plane as we checked in so early), Jon went to ask about the international flight terminal.  The nice lady told him it was Hall #1.  So we exited Hall #3 and a whole group of us navigated our push-carts through the parking lot to Hall #1.  There, the security guard looked at our tickets to India and told us that we should be at Hall #2.  So - again - we navigated our way through the parking lots to get to Hall #2.  Despite the fact that it's almost midnight, it's easily 95° outside and I'm wearing pants out of respect for the culture...blahblahblah.  So we're damn hot and slightly annoyed.

We cleared the security check in Hall #2, checked our bags, and made our way around to the customs booths.  There were about 10 booths, but no customs agents to be seen.  So we waited and waited until someone showed up around 12:30 or so.  Which means that we've now crossed over into tomorrow so you'll have to go to the Next Page!