Happy New Year

If only I were an octopus

After the bus ride and Mount Sinai I was exhausted and laid out by the pool for a while and then took a nap in preparation for New Years Eve. Our hotel had a compulsory additional charge on New Years for the party they were throwing and we got ready and headed down to the party. There was a schedule for the party which consisted of several lengthy ethnic dance routines with a DJ playing just before midnight and shortly after before the party was to end.

The party was in a large tent outside and everyone was given a party bag which consisted of an Easter bunny or Santa mask, a hat and a bag of paper balls. I asked Sam what the paper balls were for and he told me they were for throwing at people so we all tore into our bags and launched paper balls at each other. It was really silly and made me feel like a kid, I loved it! For dinner we had a really big, delicious buffet while an unintentional Snoop Dogg impersonator in a white suit danced around on stage. After we had gotten everything that we could get that was free, everyone that had been on my felucca decided that we were going to get some taxi’s and head into town to celebrate New Years.

While we were waiting for our cabs to come Sam and a bunch of other people from our tour group came into the lobby and decided they also wanted to go into town for the rest of the night and cancelled our cabs and called the tour bus to come and get us instead. It sounded like a good idea except the tour bus seemed to take forever to get there and then we waited for more people to come and fill up the bus. We had scouted out a couple of bars in town during the day that were having new years parties but they were all had cover charges. Sam called a friend of his who owned a bar and asked if we could all come in for free and he said we could so the whole bus went there. When we arrived we were pretty much the only people in the place. The bar was selling alcohol by the bottle at a price comparable to three drinks so as a group we got a couple bottles and shared them.

We celebrated several countdowns to midnight and spent the rest of the night at this bar until we returned home. It was a fun new years spent with lots of new friends.

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