A dream honeymoon among the pyramids and ruins of the Middle East turned into a nightmare for a young Co Louth couple, a judge heard.

Newly married Ciara Wilson spent several days in bed with acute gastroenteritis, dehydration and fever, for hours hooked up to an intravenous drip swinging from her hotel-room floor lamp.

Ciara and husband, Shane Brett, told their barrister, Fergal Crehan, that when they landed at Sharm El Sheikh airport on December 20, 2007, they were told their choice five-star Hotel Ghazala Gardens had been overbooked.

"We were left in no doubt by our Panorama Holidays representative that unless we took the next hotel on offer we would be left on the tarmac," Mr Brett told the Circuit Civil Court.

They spent the first night of their honeymoon in a shabby room with single beds in the Hotel Ghazala Beach. They decided to cut their honeymoon short and return to Dublin.

On December 21, they were told flights had been booked to return home and transferred to the Kiroseiz Three Corners Hotel right under the main flight path at Sharm El Sheikh airport.

When they discovered their flights ended at Gatwick with no hope of onward flights to Dublin over the Christmas holidays, they had been forced to remain on in the Three Corners Hotel.

horrendous

Ciara told Mr Crehan the buffet food in the Three Corners was horrendous. She had picked over it, eating what seemed edible and leaving the rest.

On Christmas Eve she had been taken ill with cramps and a tummy bug. She spent the day in bed perspiring with a high temperature while feeling freezing cold. Shane had called a doctor who put her on antibiotic drugs and an intravenous drip. She had become delirious.

"I spent all of Christmas day in bed when we should have been flying to Cairo to see the pyramids. We also had to cancel plans to visit ruins in Jordan," she said.

The couple, formerly of Seacrest Manor, Dundalk, Co Louth, but now living in London, took taxis to restaurants away from their airport hotel in order to avoid the food they blamed for making Ciara sick.

Judge Jacqueline Linnane said the couple's honeymoon had been ruined. She awarded them €11,600 damages and described a €100 voucher offer by My Travel Ireland Ltd, which trades as Panorama Holidays, as an insult to the couple.

hnews@herald.ie

- Ray Managh