Let the games begin. I truly believe that you can’t have a morning road trip without having some sort of cooked breakfast, bacon sarnie, or similar. It probably goes back to when I was a kid and the early morning pit stops at McDonalds before heading home after spending half of the school holidays at my Dad’s. Anyway, 30 years later and I still can’t find it in me to get through a morning road trip without something yummy and greasy. There being five of us means the prospect of doing a breakfast whilst everyone is stressing is a truly miserable one, so being the sensible person that I am, I have planned ahead. Maccies breakfast. Like I said, let the games begin, I’ve been so well behaved for a while now, I’m on holiday and so is my diet. Fingers crossed my gut copes with the punishment I am about to put it through.
In the interest of avoiding last minute panicking I took the breakfast order last night. I know I’m going to want an extra drink, and Vikki will want a hash brown, so I’m ordering two meals for me… yep, old bad habits didn’t stay old for long. That means I have two McMuffins for breakfast, and one hash brown. In my defence, I am planning for the day ahead. Still, as I am tucking into my second McMuffin I don’t dare think about how many calories it is.
The pre-planning is always necessary with travel days, because the only way to survive a travel day without having to remortgage or sell a kidney is to eat what you can, when you can. After experiencing the joy of airport lounges when travelling to Greece a couple of years ago we vowed to never fly again without using the lounge. With the lounge comes free food and drink. Sure, the food isn’t massively varied, but there will be something to eat. When we get to the lounge they still have their breakfast food out, but will be switching to their lunch options in about half an hour. I couldn’t have planned it more perfectly. Under the heat bulbs are dishes full of bacon, some rashers crispier than others, there are fat sausages, scrambled egg, baked beans and mini hash browns. We have paid for it after all so I help myself to a fry up, before finding the bread rolls tucked around the corner, I grab a couple and change the plan on the fly, sausage and bacon rolls it is, with a plate of eggs and beans. I really didn’t need to eat all that I did, but who knows what and when I’ll eat next.
When, about half an hour later. I was really hoping there would be a curry or a pasta dish. There was some pasta, but not anything that sounded particularly interesting, so for lunch I had to settle for the cold options, cheese sandwiches, chicken and bacon sandwiches, some ready salted crisps, a mini banana muffing, and another pastry with some jam on it, which was amazing, so amazing I was sure that I had got myself two, but one pulled a disappearing act. Again, I didn’t even bother thinking about the calories. It is what it is. The forecast for one day in Egypt is that it may get up to 40 degrees! If that is the case then the calories really don’t matter because the heat will finish me off long before the fat does.
To avoid paying plane prices we head to WHSmith to get some bottles of drink for the flight, and as much as we’ve told the kids to eat all they can you just know the second the snack trolley comes down the aisle one of them is going to complain that they’re hungry, so we grab some bags of sweets, and because we are looking at them me and Vikki end up with sweets too, and we’re not talking a normal bag of sweets, we’re talking the sort of bag you would keep in a fallout shelter to feed a family for a year, we’ve got one each, and another, and then another that was on sale by the tills. As Vikki said, WHSmith well and truly had our pants down. Well, there goes our holiday spending money. I’ll check the calories on the bag of sweets when I need a laugh later.
As for what else I’m going to devour, who knows. We left the UK at 13:10 and won’t be landing in Hurghada until 20:45 local time, so by the time we get to the hotel it will likely be 22:00 at the earliest. It’s all inclusive, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there will be any food to get late into the night.
I’ve done a few steps today, not loads, about 4000 at the point of being sat on the plane, and we’ll add a few thousand once we set foot in Egypt, Surely being in the air is going to shed some calories, something to do with gravity, science…
Oh, and I had to switch seats for takeoff because the belt wouldn’t fit. That’s right folks, don’t come to me in an emergency, I’m too fat to handle it. Anyway, Egypt here we come, time to walk like an Egyptian.