I suppose we can make a comment now that we are safely back in the US. As some of you may remember, there were a couple of bombs that went off on the Sinai Peninsula the week before we left for Egypt. Although we suppose a bomb could go off anywhere in Egypt, we were probably closest to the area when we were in Hurghada on the Red Sea - Dahab was about 200 kilometers away and on the other side of the Sinai Peninsula.This is not the first time that Egypt has had problems (and from the number of people standing around with nothing to do in Cairo), it will probably not be the last; but we felt safe the entire time we were in Egypt.
Cairo (and apparently other Middle Eastern countries like Israel) do take security for their visitors very seriously. Pretty much every place we went (e.g. hotel, museum, temple, restaurant) had a metal detector (now, it may not have been turned on or made an American go through, but they had one). We also had a security follow us when we went to the Pyramids by ourselves the last day; and when we went through Luxor we had our own security guard. But that was not a result of the recent bombings, but have been put in place over time.
Not to be a bunch of heroes and/or idiots, but I think our attitude was that if we cancelled our trip to a place that we had wanted to visit for decades, because of the unfortunate events in the Sinai - then I guess the bombers really were winning.
