Egypt summer 2011, HURGHADA part 1

After the last night's wedding we were a bit tired to wake up early. We took our breakfast with us from our reception and left on to the street to catch a taxi which was much easier than we had taught it would be. We went to the bus station and there was no one there. We were there at 5.30 am and our airconditioned-tourist bus was supposed to leave at 6 am.

Saija buying the tickets for the bus

Taken from the bus

Taken from the bus

I slept the first four hours in the bus so it went pretty fast. We had heard that the bus ride takes less than 6 hours so when I woke up it was less than two hours left. That would go really fast we thought. The time went on really slowly and when we had travelled six hours in the none airconditioned bus we could only see sand from the windows..

Again, not many people spoke English on the bus, and on the tourist bus we were the only tourists. :D We asked from different people how long would it take and everyone told us different answers.. One man told us that it's only one hour more and one said that it still takes more than four hours. My stomach was killing me so I couldn't even eat anything. We had only one water bottle (at that point it was too warm to be drank) and two sodas.

The time just went on and on and we were so impatient to sit there! It was terrible! At 4 pm we were still on the bus and had been on the road for 10 hours! We stopped at Safaga and where we were told that it's one more hour. We didn't believe it. The bus driver drove the bus on the way that we sometimes thought that the bus broke down when he almost switched off the engine. It would have been just our luck that the bus would have broken down in the middle of nowhere.

Finally after sitting on the bus for over 11 hours we arrived to Hurghada! We got of from the bus and we were not exactly on the neighbourhood where we thought we would be. We thought that we could only see tourists and big hotels. Nothing. The bus station turned out to be more than 6km from the hotels. We took a taxi to our Three Corners Empire Hotel and when the driver stopped in front of it we didn't believe it could be our hotel. It was HUGE! It had metal detectors in front of the entrance and the reception and the lobby were huge. The hotel had three swimming pools, bar, two restaurants, shop, ATM, gym and other stuff. It looked like a five star hotel (it was only three stars?!). It was quite a big change for us when we had slept for example in a countryside at some tiny hut. Now we were surrounded by tourists.

The biggest swimming pool, taken from our balcony

Feeling a bit down..

We had our own big room with a balcony and we both had our own big beds. We had a tv, a fridge and air conditioning! When we opened our balcony doors we could hear some band playing next to the biggest swimming pool. The songs everyone knows, no more local music. We left to eat and immediately when we left from the hotel doors we were surrounded by irritating men from the souvenir shops. "Where are you from?! Sweden, Finland, Norway? Can you come to my shop and write to my notebook this sentence in Finnish?" And they really could speak Finnish! "Finland Finland, NOKIA NOKIA, mita kuuluu?" When we walked and tried to find some place to eat at this happened several times. I hated it. I didn't like it at all. The last night we had been in a local Nubian wedding with local traditions, language, music and stuff and now the ugly men were trying to use us to get us buy something for ridiculous high prices talking Finnish to us! When I'm abroad I don't want to talk Finnish! I want to get to know the country I'm in and its lifestyle and language etc..

We found a nice restaurant or cafe towards the sea.

After we had eaten we walked back to our hotel and just relaxed on our room for a moment. Listened to the music coming from outside our balcony and watched a bit tv also before going to sleep.

Coming to Hurghada we knew that it was supposed to be this tourist location but after all we weren't surrounded by that many hotels or tourists than we had expected. All in all we found Hurghada being confusing, maybe it was because it was big or something. We got lost many many time! The city is divided into different section, like El Dashar (where our hotel was) and Sakkala where the most tourists are. The city was just weird or maybe we were just stupid for not figuring it out.. As a tourist destination there was supposed to be many tourist shops and clothes stores etc. but we didn't find that many.. Personally I didn't like the city at all! All the locals we spoke to told us that it's made for tourists and all "the locals" have moved in from different parts of Egypt just to work there. The city was also dirtier than the other parts of Egypt where we had been.

Originally we were supposed to take a ferry to Sharm El Sheikh after staying 6 nights in Hurghada but we heard that all the ferry connections were cancelled because the ex-president Mubarak was in a hospital in Sharm. So our options were to sit in a bus for over 11 hours or catch a flight. Guess which option we chose?

• On the whole trip we were thought of being under 18-years-old. All the time. Most often I was the younger one at the age of 16! This really happened ALL THE TIME! :D