Ten days on the Red Sea in April — two of us from home, an all-inclusive bracelet, water the colour of glass, and the best mangoes either of us has ever tasted. Snorkelling over the reef, one enormous day to the Pyramids, a jeep into the desert mountains and a canyon, an evening in the real Hurghada — and, in between, a great deal of very happy doing-nothing by the pool. A first-person travel diary. <em>(Photos are open-source placeholders for now — I'll swap in our own soon.)</em>
<p>We landed in <strong>Hurghada</strong> near midnight, half-asleep, and the moment the plane doors opened the warm air rolled in — soft and salty and completely unlike the cold grey city we'd left that morning. A tired man with a sign drove us to the hotel, snapped on our <em>all-inclusive</em> bracelets, and we fell into bed knowing the sea was somewhere out there in the dark.</p>
<p>We woke up, opened the curtains, and there it was — the <strong>Red Sea</strong>, impossibly turquoise, palm trees, not a cloud. We spent the whole morning just walking the beach and grinning. And then, at breakfast, the thing nobody warned us about: <strong>the mangoes.</strong> Fresh Egyptian mango, and a glass of thick mango juice so good she actually laughed out loud. We had three. We would have many, many more.</p>
<p>The water was warm as a bath and so clear you could count your toes in the shallows. Little striped fish darted around our ankles right off the beach. We floated on our backs under the April sun until our fingertips wrinkled, then lay on the sunbeds doing absolutely nothing — which, we decided, was the entire point of this holiday.</p>
<p>A boat took us out over water that turned from turquoise to deep blue, and we pulled on masks and dropped in. Under the surface it was another planet — walls of coral, clouds of yellow and electric-blue fish, and, for one heart-stopping minute, a <strong>sea turtle</strong> gliding along beneath us as if we weren't there. She gripped my hand through the whole thing. Best day of the trip so far.</p>
<p>The boat moored off <strong>Giftun Island</strong> — white sand, shallow lagoon, nothing but sea and sky. We ate grilled fish and rice on deck, swam again, and dozed in the sun on the way back with salt drying on our skin. Somewhere in there was another mango. Of course there was.</p>
<p>We had earned a lazy day and we took it seriously. Breakfast far too late, a paperback each on the sunbeds, a swim whenever we got too hot, the pool bar, an afternoon nap with the balcony door open. The hotel animation team tried to get us to play water polo; we waved from our loungers. This is the rest-time everyone comes for, and it is <em>wonderful.</em></p>
<p>The alarm went at 4 a.m. for the big one — the long drive across the desert to <strong>Cairo</strong>. Hours later, bleary and bouncing in the minibus, we came over a rise and there they were: the <strong>Pyramids of Giza</strong>, bigger and older and more unbelievable than any photo. We rode a grumpy camel, we touched 4,500-year-old stone, we could not stop saying <em>“we're actually here.”</em></p>
<p>We stood before the <strong>Sphinx</strong>, smaller than we'd imagined and somehow more moving for it, then braved Cairo's magnificent traffic to the museum and the treasures of <strong>Tutankhamun</strong> — that golden mask, the little throne, gold everywhere. We got back to the hotel near midnight, wrecked and completely, stupidly happy. Sixteen hours. Worth every one.</p>
<p>After Cairo we could barely move, so we didn't. A slow morning, a gentle swim to loosen the legs, the shade of a palm, and — naturally — a plate of sliced <strong>mango</strong> and a cold juice. We agreed that Egyptian mango should be a protected national treasure alongside the pyramids. A quiet, delicious, restorative day.</p>
<p>A jeep collected us and struck out into the <strong>Eastern Desert</strong> — and within twenty minutes the resorts vanished and we were among bare red mountains rolling to the horizon, not a building in sight. We bounced over dunes, met a Bedouin camp, drank sweet tea by a fire, and rode a camel across the sand. So much silence. So much space.</p>
<p>They stopped the jeeps on a ridge for the sunset, and the whole desert went gold, then rose, then deep violet. We sat on a still-warm rock, not talking, watching the first stars come out over the mountains. Some moments you know, even as they happen, that you'll be telling people about for years. This was one.</p>
<p>Today's adventure: a narrow desert <strong>canyon</strong>, its walls swirled cream and gold and rust, twisting deeper into the rock until the sky was just a bright ribbon overhead. We ran our hands along the cool stone, clambered over boulders, and felt very small and very far from home in the best possible way. Then back to the sea, sunburnt and dusty and thrilled.</p>
<p>Our last full day, and we wanted the <em>real</em> Egypt, not just the hotel. We wandered the <strong>Marina</strong> at dusk, got happily lost in the old town, drank strong coffee and sweet mint tea, bargained badly for spices and a little carved cat, and let a shopkeeper talk us into a shisha. Loud, chaotic, warm, alive — we loved it.</p>
<p>For dinner we skipped the buffet and ate where the locals do: a steaming bowl of <strong>koshari</strong> — rice, lentils, pasta, crispy onions and spicy tomato sauce, the national comfort food, for about a euro. Then, at a fruit stall on the walk back, we bought a bag of <strong>mangoes</strong> to smuggle home. We already knew nothing at home would taste like them.</p>
<p>We got up early on the last morning for one final swim in that unreal blue water, then packed with sand still in our shoes and a bag full of mangoes. At the airport we were sunburnt, tired, a little sad, and already plotting our return. Ten days, the sea, the desert, the pyramids, each other — and the best mangoes on earth. <em>Do zobaczenia, Egypt. До зустрічі.</em></p>