Well, our trip down to Taba (on the Israeli-Egyptian border) went well. We spent three days enjoying the sun, food, and all the amenities that the Hilton has to offer. Taba really isn't much of a town -- it's just a few hotels, followed by a couple of shops and a police station. It was a little too cool to go swimming in the Red Sea, but the hotel did have a heated pool, so the kids enjoyed swimming.
The border crossing, which I anticipated being a nightmare, was surprisingly quick and went off without a hitch. I think it's because tourist season hasn't hit yet; in a few more weeks, it'll probably be INSANE. So, I'm glad we went when we did.
The only problem we had was when we arrived at the hotel. We forgot our confirmation papers at home (I did pack them in the backpack, but I think Culacha pulled a couple of things out while I wasn't looking. Either way, I should have checked right before we left), so giving the hotel our names or passport numbers was a fruitless endeavor. Then, we decided to call the travel agent. It was after 5pm on a Saturday, so it seemed unlikely that anyone was there, but we had to try. So, hubby called them. Sure enough, no answer. As we were racking our brains, trying to figure out how we were going to pull this off being 400 km from our place, we had an inspiration to call a friend of ours -- perhaps he had our travel agent's home number. We called Azar, and while he didn't have the number, he told us to call another one of our neighbors and ask her. So, we called the Haddads, and sure enough, they had the travel agent's home number (the travel agent, btw, lives in our neighborhood). Finally. We called him, and he wasn't there, but his son was, and he went to the office, got the papers, and faxed them to the hotel. Then he proceeded to apologize to us for the mistake, even though it was clearly our fault. And the hotel, bless them, upgraded our room to sea view (as opposed to dusty-street-and-rock view) and gave us a fruit basket of oranges. So, after TWO HOURS of sitting in the hotel lobby trying to straighten everything out, we made it to our room. The kids were hungry (and Culacha was totally exhausted), but fortunately we had a few snacks with us. Hubby fed the baby and gave her some milk, and little man and I went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant. Yum!
So, I was thinking, would that have EVER happened in the US? Probably not, since the reservation would have been under our name to begin with, but we also would not have been able to call our neighbor to get the travel agent's home number and get everything straightened out. It's a little circuitous, but at least it works!
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