Sharm el Sheikh

Well I figure I better finish blogging about our Egypt trip. After Cairo we flew to Sharm el Sheikh, a resort town along the Red Sea (on the Sinai peninsula). We stayed at the Aqua Blu Resort which has a water park on site. This was the relaxing part of our Egypt trip. We mostly let the kids play at the water park all day. The water park attracts an interesting crowd- from barely clothed Eastern Europeans (think thong Speedos and lots of hairy chests) to fully clothed Arab women in abayas, hijabs, and niqabs...or burkinis. We saw lots of Arab women almost drown in the 3 feet of water at the end of a water slide b/c they don't know how to swim. The lifeguards actually have their work cut out for them. It makes for some good people watching.

A couple photos of the resort:

The view from our hotel room.

A carrot slice not to be messed with...seriously it was nearly the size of her face!

Why are there cows all over the resort? No clue, but they are everywhere.

Hooray for our friends, the Hendersons, for joining us the last couple days. They're another expat family living in Saudi and up until they arrived we hadn't heard anyone else at the resort speak English. Mei loved playing with April.

One day we left the resort and chartered a private yacht to take us snorkeling and diving (Brian). It was my favorite part of the trip. The yacht was huge and we had a crew of 5 helping us (2 dive guides, 1 cook, 1 captain, and 1 photographer- poor guy we didn't buy any of his photos...)! The meal was the best we had all week long in Egypt. Brian did 3 dives and the rest of us snorkeled. Since they knew Brian just had back surgery they did everything for him. They helped him put on his gear, take it off, etc...they even helped him put on his wetsuit- haha...and yet, if you've ever tried to put on/take off a wet wetsuit it's hard stuff! I'm grateful they treated Brian like a quadriplegic so he wouldn't hurt his back again. Here's photo of our yacht:

A couple pics of us relaxing on the top deck...

The boat crew was so great at keeping the kids entertained. They folded towels into different hats and capes for the girls.

And they let the kids pretty much have full reign over the boat and let them swing like monkeys!

And that concludes our trip. The snorkeling and diving were great. Egypt wins the prize of being the cheapest vacation destination so far since we've moved to Saudi.