Sharm has charm

Sharm El Sheikh Travel Blog

› entry 13 of 74 › view all entries

December 25th, 2006 – by: Jollyjetsetter

Water Park in Sharm El Sheikh - themed pretty much as you would expect!

As a fledgling English teacher in Cairo in the mid 1990's, my encounters with Egyptian culture involved sizeable amounts of city grime, culture shock, job-related stress, and an Egyptian man who followed me virtually everywhere in the city, as a perennial friend who I didn't really have the heart to shake off, because his will was good, and he introduced me to a few sides of life in Egypt which demonstrated their sense of hospitality. Revisiting Egypt in December 2006, 11 years on, to the resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, was a fitting way to pay homage to a former hunting ground, and also a brilliant winter escape route, with the promise of much longed-for winter sun.

Spices galore at this local store

Boarding a plane at East Midlands airport on Christmas Day was a first for me anyway, and I'm a real sucker for all those first-time travel experiences which tend to stay lodged in your mind simply because of the way in which they occur. The resort itself is well-endowed with all the tourist trappings, including a cluster of fine hotels along the beach front, and a town in two halves really, the upmarket resort side, and the more rough-around-the-edges Old City, which was not without its appeal either. Getting around was easy enough, since most attractions are centered around the resort, and the scope for beach sports or snorkelling (spectacular stuff) was right on our doorstep, as were numerous eateries, bars, clubs and excursion options. So, I indulged, in true tourist style, in snorkelling (like, wow!), quad biking (whose idea was it for me to don the shades coming back across the desert when it was dark already?), clubbing (had to see the New Year in somehow), and generally lazing around the pool (temperatures could have benefitted from being just that little higher though, give the coldness of the pool's water).

Quad biking with that kind of backdrop? - it sure beats working 9 to 5!

I had seen a different face of Egypt, albeit one coated in a gilt-edged tourist sheen, and now realize that you can never really get a fully-rounded view of any country by paying a visit to its capital city alone. There are numerous aspects to any nation of earth, I've always thought, and to single any place out simply because you're not fond of the atmosphere which the nation's capital city generates, seems like an unfair approach. Instead, I'm glad I reserved judgment for my overall evaluation of Egypt, as my sporadic bouts of sickness in Cairo might instead have falsely led me to believe that the most settling thing about it was knowing I had the right kinds of tablets to cope with my condition.