Philippe Hotel Luxor

... a bite to eat. Not sure of where Mara recommended, we were dropped off by the taxi driver and decided to run the gauntlet of the souk. Just as well most shops were closed as we were hassled with the few that
were open. My gut was not feeling the best by this stage which I put down to drinking lots of the local beer. Still we ate down this little side alley next to the Nefertiti hotel. I ordered a Margherita Pizza (which I figured would pretty safe/ and Pete ...

... price for a tourist restaurant. It was pretty tasty but a bit more expensive than usual for just appetizers. At this point we were exhausted and crashed since we had a 5am wakeup call the next day to go to the Valley of the Kings.

Normally on this day we would be getting up for a sunrise hot air balloon ride, but due to a recent crash and death, the city has shut down all balloon operations until new safety procedures and training could be done ...

... pharaoh added an embellishment to this temple and so it grew into one of the greatest in the ancient world.
We went back to the boat to collect our luggage and then out to the airport for the hour and a quarter flight to Cairo. Expecting huge delays due to road closures and security for the President Obma visit we were surprised to have a clear run back to the hotel. Once again we were able to fall into bed after a long but enjoyable day.

... The next day got off to a start with a trip to the Cairo Museam. Even before getting inside the museam we got an interesting taste of Middle East culture, that we'd seen a bit of but not too much of in Jordan: The tourist policemen at the museam were all armed with submachine guns. There have been machine guns all over our tour, at many hotels and all throughout major tourist sites. Sometimes you will see a "policeman" with a submachine gun in plain clothes. I ...

... hopefully for Bonnie as well). I foresee a good friendship arising from this chance encounter. While on the cruise, the ship stopped several times along the way to visit important site along the way, a variety of temples dedicated to the gods or to the Pharoahs. The underlying background and stories were provided by our guide, who accompanied us to each site. One could quickly get used to having private guides and drivers everywhere you go, something that we never experienced ...

... arrived at the different sites we could join the English group. Our first stop was the Valley of the Kings. We bought our tickets and walked up the valley to the top past all of the tombs until our guide found a good spot to stop and explain all about the area. We left him and chose 3 different tombs to visit. The first one was no.15, the Tomb of Seti which was unusual the pharaoh had died during its construction and so it was half finished. The second one ...

... kettle black i know) for leg room i was left far from happy with my decision to leave behind donald trump, fat oprah, tyra banks and the polish slags with rubbish boobs from my comfortable hotel room in Dahab. Arriving midday and getting pounced upon by the local touts as soon as i alighted i was pretty ready for whacking one. I find it such a shame that british peoples experiences with the arabic culture is from places like Egypt and Turkey ...

... temple I went and sat in the taxi with Mohamed. Eventually Maureen came back and I went and stood with her while we waited for the others. Once everyone got back we went to find our donkeys. I had a great donkey who wasn't slow and didn't make me feel like I was going to fall off so all round it was better than any of the camels I have been on. We got back to the hotel where we were meeting the group members who didn't ride the donkey and we tried to pretend that ...

... filons à travers la nuit. Oublions les airbags et autres standards européens de sécurité car nous n'avons même pas de ceinture à l'arrière ! La conduite se fait au klaxon, on en déduit que les panneaux et les feux sont justes là car un ministre zélé a cru bon utiliser l’intégralité du budget durement négocié auprès du gouvernement ou d’un organisme international !

Le chauffeur nous mène au travers des artères désertes de la ville jusqu'à l'hôtel Winter ...

... me to the hot-air balloon arrived at the bottom of the hotel and the bus was already full of people waiting to leave.... oh well that's the service you get for 3 dollars a night.

To get to the balloon sight we had to cross the Nile to the East Bank of Luxor, so we got a nice little motor boat over there which included "breakfast", which was just stale cake and even worse tasting coffee... once again you get what you pay for! When we got to our balloon ...