Trip report visit to Egypt August 2015

We have just come back from our 5th vacation to Egypt with our 2 children, now 9 and 13 of age. Our last 4 ones were either in May or in Winter, just from after the revolution in 2011, since before this, we would not want to go to see the sites with the large crowds of tourists around.
Our trip started with one night in Cairo in our regular hotel Osiris.
We then went on by plane to Sharm el Sheikh and directly on to Dahab. From Sharm Airport to Dahab, we ordered a cab from the hotel, waiting for us. We did not need to go by convoy, just a short notification to the local police sufficed.
The Bedouine lodge hotel in Dahab is a good family hotel.
The restaurant is adjacent to the hotel as is the Divers centre where one can rent snorkels, flippers/water shoes and goggles and also can arrange for diving excursions.
From the beach one can just walk into the water (with water shoes, the pins from sea urchins are no fun to wind up your feet) and swim right over the edge of the reef. Of course this can only be done at high tide.
As a brief change from the soaring heat in Dahab, and since we wanted to see the Sinai mountains and the St Catharine’s monastery while we were here, we organized a driver through the Bedouine lodge hotel to St. Catharine. It’s 100 km with several (heavily armed) road blocks, and in Dahab, registry was needed before we could take off. No convoy was needed on that way, but the way back from St. Catharine to Dahab, one had to drive in convoy (without a police car, but just different cabs and buses, at a fixed time, every 2 hours).
St. Catharine’s guesthouse right next to the Monastery had ample rooms left. Except for a French couple, we were the only ones staying there. Almost all the visitors are day tourists (Russians mostly, or Arab tourists). Officially, a guide was mandatory, to climb up the 2285 meter mount Sinai (or also called Mount of Mozes/Djebel Musa) and they all usually started at 3 am, but we started our climb in the early morning, when there was no guide around.
The last 3 days we stayed in Cairo and visited the Coptic part (by subway, stop at Mar Girgis station), visited a lot of small, local café’s so that we could bear the heat and not walk around too much, and where they charge you normal Egyptian prices (2-2.5 LE for a tea).
We visited the Egyptian museum, which had a 15 LE higher entry fee than 3 years ago. As for the Cairo Tower. All entry fees to big touristic monuments had been raised, it seems.
The atmosphere in Cairo was o.k., although it’s hard to make a good estimation of what is really going on. Everything was heavily guarded.
Most people were very friendly and welcoming as we experienced before, hardly any hassle.
It is not easy to advice people to just go to Egypt – as different regions have their different levels of comfort and safety. One has to inform one’s self well, and stay alert.