Move along, nothing to see here

We had our work christmas meal/drinks on Thursday, and it was surprisingly quiet if you ask me. Not a lot going on, some people got very drunk quickly, some left early and I almost lost my camera and that's about it. I was pacing myself too to last all day but in the end was home at the perfectly reasonable hour of about half twelve, and not nearly as drunk as I could have been.

Maybe everybody is just getting too old for this kind of thing!

The final countdown

And now to finish up on what we did for the rest of the holiday. Mostly this involved lounging around in the sun by the pool reading. I say in the sun, but seeing as I mostly didn't get up until about lunchtime and the sun went down about 4 then it was less so for me.



The resort wasn't really near anything, and the entertainment was all in Italian, so we did spend more time than normal in our rooms. If we did want to go to Na'ama bay then we had to get a taxi there, which mean haggling with the driver every time about how much the price was, and this ranged from 40-80 Egyptian Pounds. I hate haggling, and was getting very bored of it by the end. We mostly only went there to watch the football anyway.

On trip we went on was to go quad biking in the desert. I was a bit disappointed with this as we weren't taken over any dunes or sanything so it was all like driving normally (well, as normal as you can get on a quad bike). It was good enough to kill a few hours, and also scary in the minibus as he seemed to spend half the journey getting there driving on the wrong side of the road.




We also went snorkling one day as well, and even Tina got in and swam around, which seeing as she can't swim was might impressive. She was wearing a life jacket and holding onto the safetly ring all the time, but still. We saw a turtle swimmming down deeper, which was great as I had never seen one before. We did take an underwater camera, but it sprang a leak and so most of the pictures didn't come out well at all.




At the resort, I would have joined in games, even though I obviously couldn't understand what the enteretainment team were saying, but the sand was very stony, and my beach volleyball career was curtailed pretty early on by a big cut I got on my big toe when landing on the sand, and so I didn't play anything else.

A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight

As a brief interlude between finishing off the pictures and description of our holiday, I'm going to fill you in on my busy weekend. On Saturday we went to a party in Dagenham for some family member that hasn't been seen for about 20 years, I didn't recognise him, but then I wouldn't have been that old whan I last saw him. Anyway, I skipped out of the party early (well, 10:30) to drive back to Watford in preparation for the Hatton-Mayweather fight. That preparation consisted mostly of foreign beers and poker.

Obviously the fight finished about 6, so I went to sleep at Spike's house and woke up around half 12, getting up and coming home for an hour before heading off to Spurs to see them beat Manchester City.

Not content with that, I headed off to Brixton to meet Susie to go to XFM's Winter Wonderland. Unfortunately we missed the first act who were the XFM Rock School winners, so we had to make do with the rest....in order we had

...One Night Only, of who I do like one of their singles. Nothing else of the guitar based rock they played particularly stood out, but I guess it is hard to make an impression when people are still streaming in. Here's a video.



Next up was Kate Nash, who I thought was worse than when I saw her before at the O2 Wireless festival. She is a bit samey, although the piano playing sort of helps jangle things along, but when she went into a couple of dull songs on the guitar, then it did not go down well, with plenty of chatter in the crowd. Seems the XFM reviewer didn't think to much of her as their review mostly just mentions her sparkly clothes. We weren't the only ones to think she was bad as overhearing conversations both in the venue and on the trains home there was a general consensus. No video for her, I'm sure you have heard Foundations hundreds of times already.

To stop the crowd getting bored, Dan Le Sac v Scroobius Pip came on for a three song set. They basically consist of Mr Pip talking, almost poetically, over Dan's beats provided by an apple mac it looked like. I did recognise the first song, here it is.



Supergrass followed with a good mix of new songs and old. The average age of the crowd wasn't that old, so I did wonder how many of them would have recognised songs being played that were upwards of 10 years old, but they did go down very well (they were my favourites of the night). Apparently they are touring as the Diamond Hoo-Ha Men, or something, very weird name.

Next gap was filled by an "acoustic" set by Jack Penate. I'm not sure an electric guitar plugged into an amp is stricly acoustic, but hey. He seemed to be enjoying himslef very much and was very lively, better than I expected too. Here's Torn on the Platform for your entertainment.



Finally we had Bloc Party, who Susie really likes but I'm not overly into their stuff. They played all the sings I knew, which is always good, especially as includes a couple I do like (like Flux, below). There werre also loads of large balloons for the crowd to play with, and the band were certainly enjoying playing what, in essence, is a home-town concert. The whole thing finished at 11:15, which meant by the time we got back to Euston we just missed a train, and being a Sunday there wasn't another one for 50 minutes, and it was cold. We eventually got back home about 1:15am.....I was so tired, in fact I still am a bit.

Would have helped if they had installed escalators

On the last Friday of our holiday, I had the smart idea of climbing Mount Sinai, which is, apparently, the one that Moses climbed to get the 10 commandments. This idea of this was to climb overnight so we could see the sunrise. This meant they we were oicked up about 10 o'clock at night, drove for a few hours to the bottom of the montain and then made our way up at 2. It all sounded fine in theory, of course I had forgotten that the walk would be uphill.

We could have got on the back of a camel to walk us up, but that is just for weeds or those unable, and whilst it did hurt, and Tina was pretty much dead on her feet, we continued on foot, as if we can't do this when we are young(ish) what will we be like when we are old(er). The killer going up, though, was the fact there are 750 steps (well, rocks) at the top, so after two hours of walking we then had to get up those. We basically did those in little blocks to break them up, rather than attempting the 750 in one go.

It was a really clear sky at the bottom of the mountain, and we could see so many stars....but unfortunately at the top it was a littl cloudy, so I think the sunrise was not as great as it could have been. Some photos here to show you though.






It was cold up there so we hired a couple of blankets to keep us warm. I think Tina liked hers a bit too much




There were plenty of other people up there to watch. I wanted to get a picture from above walking up where you could see a stream of torches but it wouldn't come out, so here's some atop the mountain.



So you'd think that would be the worst of it, oh no. Coming down was not just a stroll, it was the 'other' way, which consisted of 3,500 steps down, which, I can tell you, is so much harder than it sounds, our legs were wobbling and we had to take several stops. Here are some pictures of the different routes from the bottom, the first being the camel trail and the second the steps down.




Afterwards, we had a trip around St. Catherine's monastary, with the people we went with, and had to endure questions like "Do the monks eat meat?" and "Are there any Earthquakes in Egypt as they cause Tsunamis?"....ah, thrilling. We pretty much slept the rest of the day, and I couldn't walk properly until about now.

Oh yeah, the monestary also surrounds the burning bush (below, not on fire), and a load of skeletons recovered from graves in the hills, weird....

Dive Dive Dive!

Actually, I'm going to split the holiday into four posts. As we were there, I thought I would try scuba diving to break up the days. Allegedly the Red Sea is one of the top three diving/snorkling destinations. I wasn't sure if I would like it so I only booked the first lesson for the middle of the first week, but I did like it, and unfortunately I could only go once more.

The first time was good, once I'd learnt the basic signs, and three of us went down to about 12m. I saw lots of fish and coral, and some pictures are below. the good thing was I didn't get told off by the instructor much.

The second time (no pictures) we actually went down to 20m, but I think that was because the other people I was with were experienced divers and so as I was the only beginner the instructor could look after me. Again I saw lots of fish, including a big one which seemed to be as large as my armspan, also a clam type thing opening and closing, and something akin to a puffer fish going from being all open to all closed up....I really enjoyed it all and wished I had gone more, maybe next holiday....

One thing about the second trip though was that my air meter dropped pretty quickly and I thought I hardly had any air left, which was a bit of a panic. I used the instructor's air for a bit, but it turns out that it was the gauge that was broken and I had plenty of air.......still a bit of a panic for a novice like me.

So what are those pyramid shaped things then?

We've just come back from two weeks in Egypt, and so I have lots of things to tell you about the holiday. I figured I would split it into three for you, and so first up is our day trip to Cairo.

Now, I was aware that the Egyptian people aren't the most punctual, but today was the best example of that. We were due to be picked up at 4:40 in the morning, which, for those that know me, was bad enough, but the coach turning up at 5:45 was a sickener, we so could have done with an extra hour in bed. The thing is the airport was only 5 minutes away. The flight was due for 6 and so we were a tad worried, but we got to the airport and they just said there would be no problem, and they held the flight for an hour for the 8 of us that were late....which was nice. It was a Turkish flight, um, Pegasus airways or something, although the shortened name looked like fly pigs to me!

There were 8 of us on the trip together, with a minibus and guide in Cairo, which was handy as I don't think I would have liked to have attempted to get around there. Allegedly (according to our guide) it is the 3rd most populated city in the world behind Mexico City, and Tokyo (this seems to disagree though). Driving seemed to be a nightmare as three lanes became six, and the basic rules appeared to "try to get in front of the car in front of you". And the cars were varied with some looking at least 30 years old and some brand new, some with lots of dents and some pristine.

The first thing in Cairo appears to be that it is split in two, but not convetionally. On one side of the road, towards the nile, we had houses, offices and other buildings, and on the other side there were graves (although these were also in the shape of small rooms. These graves apparently go on for several miles, but it is weird as some people actually live there if they have nowhere else to go, and at least one had a satellite dish. Another thing was there were many blocks of flats that looked incomplete. Apparently that is because there is no tax on the unfinished buildings (I don't know if that is for residents or builders) so they never do complete.

The morning was taken up by pyramids and the sphynx. We did go inside the pyramid (second pyramid it was imaginitively titled), which basically consists of a downward passage about three feet high (I banged my head, it hurt, glad I'm not taller otherwise it could have really hurt) leading to a smallish chamber. Of course there is nothing in the chamber save for an empty burial casket, but, you know, it was more for the experience of being inside than what was there. Here are some pictures from the morning.








Also here is a picture of a local police officer and his trusty steed.



And a local tradesman off to market



We had lunch on the Nile, which we thought would be nice, until we found out it was here: -



It was the quickest meal in a restaurant I have ever been to. It was a set menu, but each course was brought out before everybody on the table had finished the one before. I reckon the soup, chicken dinner and ice-cream, plus a beer, took about 25 minutes to consume.

In the afternoon we went to the museum of Egypt, which is probably most famous for housing all of Tutankhamun's stuff (save for the acual casket, which is still where he was found, and the coupld of hundred bits currently on show at the O2. It's incredible how much golden stuff he had, and he died young so I wwould imagine some of the other pharoahs had so much more (before the grave robbers got to it that is). The Gold mask is pretty special.

Final stop in Cairo was at a bazaar, where we really couldn't be bothered to haggle with anybody so didn't buy anything, and instead went to a coffee shop for some tea and a shisha.

Flying home was pretty straight forward, although when we got back to Sharm el Sheikh (which is where we were staying by the way, I don't think I mentioned that before), the coach driver and rep didn't seem to know where the hotels were and were having an argument all the way back. We just made it back in time for dinner, but another couple certainly wouldn't have, and they were getting up the next day to go to Luxor, madness.

The rest of the holiday will follow soon, and note that you are getting the pictures on here before facebook for once.