This morning after breakfast we all met up again to say our goodbyes and have group photos taken by the waiters.
Andy, Tina and Natasha were the first to leave, they were going to Cairo for 3 days and we all went down to wave them a tearful farewell.
The rest of us were not leaving until after lunch so after we had packed we met up again. We were moving to the New Winter Palace hotel in Luxor along with Clive and his wife and another family. After lunch we said another tearful farewell to Wendy and John and Karen, and Ray and I set off to start the second part of our Egyptian adventure in Luxor.
We climbed down from the Mini-bus with eager anticipation outside the New Winter Palace Hotel, Luxor.
There was another couple and a family who had come from the cruise ship so we
all stuck together at reception until we had signed in. This was our week of
adventure and we were looking forward to it. We were allocated our room and
we went up in the lift. We were a bit dismayed to find our room was next to
the lift, but we never actually heard it at all. We went inside and looked around.
It was about twice the size of the cabin with a balcony overlooking the gardens,
but when we opened the door to the balcony we were hit by the noise of the air
conditioning system. The view was nice but we had hoped to be able to see Luxor
temple but we were too far back.
On opening the wardrobes we found a thick layer of dust. Maybe the room hadn't been used for a while. Never mind; we didn't expect to be spending too much time in our room anyway. The porters brought up our cases and after the customary baksheesh left us to unpack.
While I unpacked, Ray went to find out about the hotel Masseur, he was hoping that a massage would help his painful shoulder. I had been rubbing ibuprofen gel into it but it wasn't getting much better. He found him and booked an appointment for the following day. After a while we went to explore. We found the other family and they had a room with a view of the Nile. They took us inside to have a look. It was a gorgeous view and they could also see Luxor Temple so we took some photos, then we went back to our room to shower and change.
Before our holiday, Ray had been in contact with Jane, an Egyptologist who has some holiday flats on the West Bank and arranges tours. We had arranged to meet her at 7:00p.m. to make the final arrangements for our tours and to pay her. She was there on the dot and we were delighted to meet her in person at long last. We had a drink and discussed the tours that we had arranged and which days we would be doing them. Unfortunately we decided that we would have to cancel the donkey ride from the workman's village at Deir el Medina to the King's Valley because of Ray's shoulders, but we still had 5 days tours arranged.
She told us we would have our own guide and our own minibus and driver. Our guide would show us the sights that we wanted to see and be with us for as long as we wanted for each day's visits. She suggested early starts of 6.00a.m. so that we would miss the midday heat. We also asked her if we could see her flats so she said she would arrange that for the next day on our way back from our visit to the West Bank.
We wanted to get as much sight seeing in as possible so we originally only allowed ourselves two rest days at the end of the week. However because of Ray's painful shoulder we ended up cancelling our donkey ride, which gave us an extra rest day and boy were we glad of it.
Monday: Transfer from cruise boat to hotel and settle in
Tuesday: Visit Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, Temple of Seti I
Wednesday:Deir-el-Medina, Valley of the Nobles, Ramasseum
Thursday:Karnak and Luxor Temples, evening - Sound and Light Show Karnak Temple
Friday: Donkey ride over the ridge from Deir-el-Medina to Deir-el-Bahri
Saturday:
Convoy
visit to Abydos and Dendera
We asked Jane to recommend some restaurants, but she went one better than that and got her driver to take us to a genuine Egyptian restaurant called Soffra, in the middle of the town. We were dropped off outside and she spoke to the waiter then left us in his hands.
We were shown to a table upstairs with a view over the street and given a menu.
We hadn't a clue what to order so we chose a starter of olives and feta cheese, and as they did not sell alcohol (as many genuine Egyptian restaurants don't) we had water and cola. The waiter brought out a basket of freshly made bread and a dish of a creamy dip and another with some very spicy chopped tomatoes. It was very tasty and we stuffed ourselves, which was a big mistake.
Our next course was then delivered, which was a sort of lamb stew for Ray and a veal stew for me. These were served piping hot in earthenware pots. Again they were very tasty but we had eaten so much bread we could not do it justice. When we had eaten as much as we could manage we had a mint tea to help the digestion.
We asked for the bill and couldn't believe our eyes when it was only 80EL, or £ 8:00. We asked the waiter to order us a taxi and we returned to our hotel for a nightcap and an early night, ready for our 5:00 a.m. wake up call the next day.
There was a singer performing in our reception so we listened for a while before going to bed. Just as we were about to go upstairs, a fellow guest came over and asked if we understood the bar bill. We had discovered that whilst the singer was on the charges were higher than on the menu card. We got chatting to the couple and before we knew it, it was well after midnight.
