Winter in Egypt

I would greatly appreciate any advice:

I'll be in Turkey (3rd dec-23rd dec), Morocco (23rd dec-11 jan) and Egypt (11 jan-27 jan) with my sister - we're 2 females under 26.

1. What places should I not bother seeing due to the cold weather or closures during winter?

2. What shoes should I be taking? Boots? Sneakers? Sandals?

3. Anything else I need to know? Or anyone have any experiences they want to share about winter travels in these areas?

Cheers~!

Winter time is THE time to visit Egypt, places you should not bother to see? that's entirely up to your personal taste (and your companion's). What is offered to see? Egyptology/archaeology, scuba diving/snorkelling, trekking, 4-wheeling, spas, Islamic culture, Coptic culture, and of course the colorful everyday Egyptian life, among many other things. Shoes? depends on what you want to do but for most purposes a pair of sneakers and a pair of sandals will do. Bring several "layers" of clothes as there is a big differene in temp between day and night specially in desert areas, a hat or scarf, sun block and sunglasses are highly recommended against the tropical sunshine even in winter.

Have a great trip!

as a young western woman who's been to egypt a few times let me tell you to get ready for the hassle. many egyptian men in tourist areas have no respect for us. they will heckle, cat call, and even grope if given the chance. even if you are accompanied by a male companion this can still happen.
that being said i still plan to return. there's something about egypt that keeps me coming back despite the terrible hassle.
sneakers and sandals should be good enough.
be sure to see cairo's major sites, luxor, and awan.
check out this video made in egypt about the hassle that travelers can face:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcCZhDPRvmQ<BR><BR>you are a walking dollar, remember this!

Egypt is ok in winter - but Turkey will be cold, cloudy, wet - maybe even snow on the Anatolian plateau.
Morocco will also be fairly cold [and damp in the north] and Marrakech is the only place where weather will roughly approximate Egypt.
Get more info on these countries on the appropriate boards.

Turkey will be cold and wet. Rain in Istanbul, snow in Cappadocia. Egypt is suprisingly cold in the wintertime. The first winter we experienced when my wife and I lived in Cairo I was the coldest I'd ever been in my life. You just never warm up, mainly due to the fact that there is no heat in most places. Bring sneakers for sure, I'm not sure how often you'll be able to wear sandals, but bring them as well. No need for boots, but warm socks will be a big help. We hiked around Goreme in December one year and it was very muddy, so boots might not be a bad idea there.) Make sure to bring some clothing that you can wear in layers. Also a hat and warm gloves.

Regarding that youtube video- I don't want to get into a big discussion on it, but it was both accurate and ignorant at the same time. Expect some hassles, but you'll have a far better time if you can, for the most part, laugh it off. We lived in Egypt for two years and experienced it all. All the baffling requests and hassles. But we left Egypt still loving the country and the people. (And this despite the fact that we left Egypt after being vicitms in the Dahab bombing in 2006. I'm still recovering from the bomb blast that almost took off my right arm and left ankle.)

That YouTube video was awful! I only watched half, but in each case the tourist seemed clearly in the wrong to me. I'm expecting Egypt to be a hassle ... but I'm also thinking that I'll do just fine if I can just avoid other backpackers!

Tommot - hope your recovering well, and glad to hear you still love the country.

If you stay in the budget hotels, some don't have heat and it can get quite cold. Bring a warm coat - maybe a wool trench coat rather than a 'ski' type.

I have a pic of me in a long black wool (thick!) trench coat riding a camel at the pyramids.

tommot, really u need to post the details of that! I am very curious to hear this experience. Glad u are doing better.

Ahh, the details, please excuse me if I don’t get into the gory details, it’s still tough to talk about:

My wife and I had lived in Cairo for two years. I taught at an American school there, she worked for an NGO. Her parents came for a visit and it was my spring break. I went to Dahab a few days early to recover from a long winter of teaching while my wife took her folks to Petra in Jordan. They flew into Sharm late afternoon on the 24th and took a cab to Dahab. When they arrived they were hungry, so we took a stroll down the corniche to find a place to eat. We had stopped to look at the menu at Capone’s and were walking away when the first bomb went off on the opposite side of that little bridge. I saw flame and sparks and thought, “what a weird time to be shooting off fireworks.” Then someone yelled “run!”

We were all in different spots near Capone’s. I and my mother-in-law were close to the menu; my wife and her father were over near the tourist trinket shacks. My plan, and this all happened in seconds, was to jump over one of the walls that separate the walkway from the restaurant seating areas. I got about two steps before the second bomb went off, the one on the side of the bridge near Capone’s. I remember a loud bang and then flying through the air. The next thing I remember was coming to on the ground surrounded by death and destruction.

I took a quick inventory of my body and it wasn’t pleasant. I thought my right arm had been blown off as all I could see were bits of bone sticking out from my shoulder. My left ankle was just hanging by skin. I saw my wife lying on the ground about fifteen feet from me and my father-in-law sitting up not far from her. As I tried to crawl over to my wife two Egyptian men snatched her up and ran off with her. Then a group of men came over to help me. They put me on a blanket and carried me to the back of a jeep where I was driven to the Dahab clinic. I don’t really feel like going into details here… needless to say the next few hours were as close to hell on earth as I’ll ever come. The clinic was full of injured people, bodies, blood and chaos. I was then taken by ambulance to the hospital in Sharm, then the next morning flown to Cairo in a military plane. At the hospital in Sharm I learned my wife was ok, as was my father-in-law. It wasn’t until I got to Cairo did I find out my mother-in-law was fine. (She was the smart one; as soon as the first bomb went off she just ran like hell and only suffered a few minor shrapnel wounds.)

After four days in Cairo we were all flown to an American military hospital in Germany, then back to the USA. I was in the hospital in the states for four months. My upper right arm was pretty much destroyed so it had a metal bar put in and is fused at a 90 degree angle. My left ankle was seriously fractured and I lost a bit of bone as well. I had my final surgery on my leg in august and hopefully will be able to walk with only a slight limp soon. (I’m still in a wheelchair recovering from that surgery.) I’ve had a total of 13 operations since the bombing. I had shrapnel wounds, well, everywhere. There’s not a part of my body that doesn’t have a pretty large hole in it. I also suffered quite a bit of nerve damage. My right wrist does not work, but my fingers do. On Tuesday I’ll have surgery to have the wrist fused and a tendon transfer on my thumb.

My wife suffered a lot of shrapnel wounds to her lower body, but thank god escaped serious injury. My father-in-law also had a lot of shrapnel wounds and a serious fracture of his right ankle. He had a final surgery on the ankle last week and will hopefully be able to walk normally soon.

So that’s the short version with a lot of terrible details missing. Also some funny tales omitted as well. (You know… it is Egypt. I could use up a page just telling the story about the Cairo hospital orderlies who got into a fist fight over which operating room I was supposed to be in. or the time a wheel came off my gurney dumping me on the ground…) as I said above, I don’t blame the people of Egypt for what happened. Just some nut jobs in the Sinai. My wife and I visited Egypt in May to see friends and say goodbye to that part of our lives. I’ll never live in that country again, but I left knowing Cairo and Egypt will always be “home” in some way.

Finally, I do have an opinion on the Penguin in Dahab. That’s where we were staying. My mother-in-law managed to find her way back to the hotel after the bombing. (She’d been in Dahab a total of one hour; all she remembered was that I’d said the place had a two story restaurant.) She took a taxi to Cairo the next morning and the guys at the Penguin actually made her pay for our rooms. Wow. I know business is business, but that’s pretty hardcore.

Sheesh and Wow. I will respond later because I am exhausted right now after a long day, but just wanted you to know I read this post and am pretty speechless (typeless?).

Thanks for letting us know, Tommot. That's a powerful and horrible story. I'm still in shock just reading it. Again, best of luck with your recovery.

Thanks for the well-wishes. I've hesitated telling the story on the Tree because I don't want people to avoid Egypt. But stuff does happen. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's funny, just the day before the bombing I was walking along the corniche to go snorkeling and thought that Dahab was probably next in line for a terrorist act as Sharm and Taba had already been hit. I remember thinking as I walked how easy it would be to do some serious damage due to the masses of people and the very lax security. I guess I should have followed up with that thought. But who'd have ever known, you know?

One piece of advice for travelers- Register at your embassy! Let them know where you are and your emergency contacts. As we were registered they got in contact with family in the states very quickly.