That weekend would have been Easter in the Coptic Church calendar - they follow the same old calendar as the Orthodox churches. Despite the majority of the population in Egypt being Muslim some of the key Coptic festivals and holidays are kept as public holidays by government and public bodies so that might be the explanation. It would have had no religious significance for 90% of the population and they would refer to it as the 'Spring holiday' and probably just took the opprotunity to have a long weekend away. So not that different to Easter here for most people really

SM

hat would explain why all the staff kept wishing me Happy Easter & why there was a special Easter gala brunch on Sunday 14th April & it included a chocolate egg. There was also a lot of painted boiled eggs at breakfast.

I was really confused as I kept thinking ' but Easter was last weekend'

Many thanks for explaining it, I guess I should have put two & two together.

The weekend holidaymakers were mainly Muslim as the ladies wore scarves and the hotel had a large water taxi that took guests off in to town in groups of 40 or 50 at a time and I assumed they were all going to the Mosque for prayers.

xxx

Hi doe, no problem. I think it's interesting that the hotel probably made a big thing of Easter knowing that they would have a lot of European guests in the hotel but that they didn't click the different dates for Easter either and that most of them would probably have celebrated Easter the weekend before! Though the Russians wouldn't (does the hotel attract many?) and if there were any there it would have all made sense to to them because it really was Easter as far as they were concerned

I'm very involved with a centre for women that has a very culturally and religiously diverse membership and we're never short of a reason for a party or celebration. We try and celebrate, or at least mark in some way, all the major festivals for all the various cultures and faiths but I'm sure that if we looked into it closely enough we could probably find at least one excuse every month for a party. This last year we had both a Christmas party for all the members and an Epiphany (12th Night) dinner arranged by the Board members for the staff and volunteers to thank them for all the work they'd put into the other celebrations in December. But we did then have to decide whether that would be in line with the Protestant/Catholic calendar with the sort of cake served in Spain or in line with the Orthodox calendar and with the sort of foods associated with it in Eastern Europe. In the end we went out for a really great curry on the 6th January because by then everybody was all Christmassed out

SM

funnily enough we had the same conversation around the pool on the fri and saturday (14th) we were leaving chris. Most of us thought (incorrectly ) that easter was celebrated on the same date everywhere in the world until one more knowledgable guy joined in the conversation. The Egyptians starting pouring in on the Friday evening and much to my annoyance we couldnt secure our room past 2pm on the saturday because they had 150 rooms to get ready

Thanks for the more details explaination SMa ..As they say you learn something new everyday ..

Hello to you both, I find it really interesting, so thanks for the further explanations SMa.

We were lucky at the Movenpick as many hotels don't cope well with a huge influx of guests on special weekends, but they did a great job. Presumably it's not practical/economic recruiting extra staff for 2 or 3 days & they have to cope with the regular staff. I was pleased to see the place doing well.

We checked in about 6.30pm on the Fri, I imagine it would have been chaos earlier in the afternoon & might have got things off to a bad start for us - first impressions & all that.

The hotel didn't have many Russians, going from the languages I deciphered seemed to be Brits, Germans, Swiss, Belgians, Scandinavians & the first weekend many Egyptians, most of whom left by lunchtime on Monday.

Shame about your late checkout Lyn. When DH went to settle up on the last morning, he told the manager what a lovely time we had spent and that we would probably be back & he offered us a complimentary late check out till 2.30pm. Brilliant as coach was at 3.10pm.

xxx