Christmas Eve - to Egypt

Christmas Eve Day
Our day started at 2:30 a.m. with a phone call from the taxi service making sure we really did want a taxi at 3:30 a.m. and if we did could they come earlier as the roads were ice covered snow that had melted off and on. The taxi arrived and got us to the train station on time.
An hour and a half later we pulled into London Kings Cross and walked across the street to St. Pancreas to catch a First Capital Connect train to Gatwick Airport. Once we arrived at Gatwick we needed to catch a bus from the South Terminal to the North Terminal. At the North Terminal there was a Thomson representative who gave us a luggage tag with our cabin number. Next we got in line along with the other million people who were going with us to Egypt. While in line we were instructed by the heavily armed men in black uniform to stand to the right and place all luggage and bags on the ground so they could have their adorable black lab puppy sniff our bags. Always on alert with their hands on their machine guns this group of men patrolled our area.
Arriving at the check in desk we were told we did not have our “tickets” and must go to customer service and come back. Jim did this and finally we were checked in and able to go through security. It is 8:30 a.m. now and we are starving so we grab a sandwich to eat only to have our plane called for boarding before we could take a bite.
At last we are on the plane and literally crammed into our seats. Even my knees were banged up against the seat in front of me so you can imagine poor Jim’s. We ran into a bit of turbulence and I thought of Jessica. She would not have fared well with it. Jim said it was the worst he had ever been on. We arrived around 5 p.m. Egypt time. Once down the stairs of the plane we were shuttled by bus to the main building were, guess what, we stood in line. Once inside we looked for our Thomson person who pointed to the next person we were to go to. He pointed to the line at immigration we were to go through and have our passports stamped. Besides the one million people on our plane there were 5 other planes that had disembarked at the same time. We made it through and now to wait for our luggage. Jim’s came out first so we waited, and waited, and waited for mine. My battered pink suitcase with the corner punched in eventually showed up and we found yet another Thomson person to show us where to find out bus. The bus was a nice 46 passenger tour bus which was to take us to the ship.
The sun sets around 5 p.m. so we had a beautiful night ride full of bright lights and Christmas decorations everywhere. Arriving at the port we were checked in at a small building and of course the traditional boarding picture was taken. Mind you we have been up for 14 hours and been on 2 trains and an airplane. We looked marvellous. They asked us to walk across this huge empty parking lot to our boat. At the ramp to get on the boat a young man was waiting with a bottle of something in his hand wanting to squirt it into your hands. He kept waiting for us to put out our hands and kept repeating hydrene and looking at me like I was dim-witted or something. Finally I clued in that he was saying hygiene. I don’t think he would have let us pass if we had not used the disinfectant anyway.
We are in cabin 230 which is on the 6th floor. We do not have a private balcony but outside our window is a sun deck with lounge chairs lined up. Our cabin is the first one in the area so we are close to the elevator and stairs so easy access to everywhere.
After unpacking we decided to find a place to eat and had a wonderful dinner where we ate outside by the railing, overlooking Sharm el Sheik. Real mashed potatoes so Jim went back for seconds. After listening to a live band play some Beatle tunes we decided to turn our reservations in for what we wanted to do this week.
Exhausted we turned in for the night.