What can really be said about the first day of the holiday? A combination of anxiety to reach the airport on time, a relative lack of traffic, the need to check in two hours before departure, an hour's delay and a five hour flight makes for a long day. It seems so important at the time - for so long you are stuck in that ghastly South Terminal at Gatwick and then in that unnatural metal contraption flying through the air that the outside world seems irrelevant. (Although the Alps looked rather nice). In fact the only thing that happened on the flight was that Jimmy and I decided to get married. Not immediately. Sometime. I think it was over Greece.
We arrived at Sharm International Airport where we experienced a mild culture shock, although nothing like we expected. The major irritation was a bunch of men hanging around the luggage belts giving away the (free) trolleys for two English pounds. Most irritating was when we put one of our cases on a trolley a man came up and moved it onto another one - for £2.
But never mind: we were soon on the transfer bus being driven through the resort to our hotel. By night it looked very impressive - all low rise white pained Moorish buildings. The rep informed us that there are 297 hotels in Sharm El-Sheikh, with all the major chains represented, and dozens more being constructed.
We arrived at our hotel, quaintly named the Cleopatra and settled down for a drink in the 'coffee shop' (bar). We were soon in conversation with Maresa, an architect from North London, who had been on our plane, and was over with her fourteen year old sons Claude and Isaac. We were to see a lot of them over the next week; we thoroughly enjoyed their company. Maresa was the first to hear of our engagement.
After a light but tasty snack, we retired to bed. End of day one.
