A week before heading to Egypt

Christmas with our daughters and their families is always lovingly celebrated at the beginning of December. It stretches out the Christmas holiday for everyone and helps to make Christmas family visits a little easier. Our condo Christmas takes place on the day of the Fergus Santa Claus parade which was on December 3 this year. Lunch, parade, stockings, games, movie, dinner and gifts made for a great family day together.

During the week leading up to the trip, our backpacks will be filled and organized to suit the type of trip we are going on. This year, we will be moving around Egypt via a number of different modes, independently. Time to dig out our rimmed Tilley's, haha.

Once again, we are focussed on travelling lightly. Our backs are not getting younger! So we are taking 1 pair of light weight pants, 2 pairs of shorts/capris/skirt, 4 short-sleeved T-shirts, a couple of long-sleeved shirts, a bathing suit, night clothes, underwear and socks, a scarf, flip flops, hat, toiletries, binoculars and electronics. I also taking a long, lightweight dress for Xmas and leggings. It is recommended that foreigners dress conservatively.

We are both taking our phones (which have dual sims), an IPAD each, a power charger, and a universal travel adapter. We plan to get two sim cards at the Cairo airport.

We are also taking 2 daypacks, one is packed away.

Both of us have a small travellers purse/murse for items that we need at hand, including a first aid kit, snacks, toothpicks, a guidebook and passports. On the plane, we are wearing comfortable pants, a short- sleeved shirt and a sweater/fleece, trail shoes and our puffer jackets. We cross the Atlantic at night.

For Christmas, we each got a TRTL neck pillow for the flight. It should be quite the upgrade to not having anything but a sore neck after long flights!

Our flight, from Toronto to Heathrow and then Cairo, leaves at 6 pm on Sunday. We decided to take Red Car to the airport. Easy for us.Read more