The Ibn Tulun mosque was very photogenic and was one of our favourite mosques we saw in Egypt.

Next we headed to Rafai Mosque, and the Madrasa of Sultan Hassan. To be honest, we were really not impressed by these mosques after what we’d seen in Turkey and Morocco. They all charge expensive admission, there’s no one actually worshipping in them, they’re not well kept up… We should have just stopped after Ibn Tulun and gone back to shopping.

The Muhammad Ali Mosque is a bad copy of Istanbul's Blue Mosque.

Well, at least we got this nice shot. Above Wendy's head are the Pyramids of Giza.

We cabbed it back to the Khan-al-Khalili, and did some last minute souvenir shopping. We bought a huge hanging chandelier, and some other souvenirs.

We spent the next few hours trying to figure out how to protect the lamp for its long ride home. We asked someone on the street, and what happened next unfortunately summed up our experience with Egyptians. He kindly said his friend has a box and he would bring us to it. The fact that he spoke English fluently should have warned us he was not on the up and up. He brought us to his friend’s closed alabaster shop, and said he would go get the box, and to wait there. Meanwhile his friend started the hard sell on his crappy China-made souvenirs. During the course of the conversation, it was made obvious to us that he intended to *sell* us this crappy box, for $20 US. Once we pieced together this was yet another scam, we got out of there as fast as we could.

We finally got a box from a grocery store for about a dollar. While in the store, we had an interesting conversation with an Egyptian who was just visiting, on a break from his studies in London. He asked us if we had enjoyed our stay in Egypt. Not wanting to offend anyone, we of course lied. He seemed genuinely surprised that we supposedly had a good time.

We have learned that when wandering looking for hotels without a reservation, it is very important to fight off any touts that might want to take you to the lobby. The hotel will increase the daily charge to pay off the tout. Fortunately, in this case, the guy did actually work for the hotel so there was no problem. We had a positive experience at this hotel – it was clean, with a private shower (with hot water).

We tried to stay at the Berlin Hotel again. The outside of the building is grungy, and the elevator had long since passed away. 6 flights of stairs later, we were showed to a room which seemed ok. As we were checking in, another guest came out of another room, complaining how loud it was. The owner told him not to worry, that he would switch him rooms. He told us the room he showed us wasn’t available, and that we could leave our bags with him, and he would move our bags to the room (or one similar) when it was cleaned.  We specified with him that it would NOT be the room that the other guest had just complained about.

Fast forward to when we came back to our room at the end of the day. Of course, it WAS the room the other guest had complained about. Luckily, we hadn’t paid yet. We screamed and complained, and of course no other rooms were available. At this point, we only had one more night left, and we had really had it with being screwed over by unscrupulous businesses. We grabbed our bags and left the hotel. We wandered the area and eventually settled at the Lotus Hotel.

Local ferry crossing to the West Bank, Luxor

We were immediately surrounded by taxi drivers (as expected) and, as usual, found the quiet guy who wasn’t aggressive and haggled with him. Although we had been prepared to pay $50 for a taxi and driver for the day (given what the guidebook told us, and our terrible haggling skills), we managed to get one for only $10 US for 5 hours. It might have been so cheap because it was New Year’s morning, and there were very few tourists. He was reliable, always waiting for us at the sites we visited, and we tipped him 50% at the end of the day.  Getting around by taxi is really the best option for the independent traveler who wants to cover a lot of ground on the West Bank. The sites are spread apart, signage is not always there, and the prices for a taxi are cheap.

We're still trying to figure out how the paint at Medinat Habu can survive all those years, yet our deck needs re-staining every two years...

Next up we headed to the tombs of the Artisans, with some great underground (very underground) tombs. We were lucky the site was pretty empty. It was VERY hot (even underground), and only small groups are allowed into a tomb at once. We can imagine that on busy days this would not be a fun one.

Next up was the Tombs of the Nobles, but we screwed this one up. You buy tickets from the main ticket office (all tickets except Valley of the Kings are bought from a main tourism office on the street leading away from the harbor, and if you fail to buy the tickets here, you have to go BACK there, tickets are NOT available on site!).

The problem was that they’ve divided the tombs up into groups and so to see the ones we wanted to see you needed two tickets, one to each of the tombs in that "group". Although there is only one ticket for the tombs of the nobles, once you visit one tomb within a "group" you can then only visit another tomb in that group with the same ticket. We didn’t understand this. So, we wasted our tombs of the noble entry tickets on a tomb we didn’t really want to see (cause we’d actually managed to find that one ), thinking we could still use it later for the other tomb. We still don’t really understand what happened, as none of the guards spoke English very well. Surprisingly, they couldn’t even be bribed.

West Bank Tombs and Valley of the Kings, Luxor: The Royal Barque heading off for the underworld.

The Valley of the Kings. Unfortunately, a lot of the tombs we wanted to see were closed.

Vegetables for sale, Luxor street market, Egypt

Felucca at sunset on the Nile river.

The sleeper compartment on the night train from Luxor to Cairo was very nice. The linens were very clean, the sink was clean, and the toilets in the hall were good too.

Abu Simbel

Since all the tourists from Aswan arrive at the same time, it’s a zoo. There are long lines to get into the tombs, and security guards shouting at you if you dawdle. It’s very difficult to get any good photos since the site is crawling with people. It’s still beautiful, however, and we did enjoy it.  The other way to get there is to take a cruise boat and make a couple of days of it. I’m sure these lucky people have the site to themselves and can enjoy it at a much less hurried pace.

The Unfinished Obelisk. What a sad, sad excuse for a tourist attraction.

The Temple of Philae

Outside the cafe at Philae Temple

The mini-bus dropped us off at the hotel where Hamis Travel had arranged to leave our stuff for the day (finally, something that worked well!). We spent some more time exploring Aswan, and then got the evening train back up north to Luxor.

That concrete shelf in the shower is specially designed to inflict maximum damage on people above 5 feet tall. Only at the Arabesque Hotel.

Well ventilated towels at the Arabesque Hotel. Did we mention the Arrabesque Hotel in Luxor isn't very good?

The sound and light show, Karnak Temple

Hieroglyphics at Karnak Temple lit up for the evening sound and light show.

Upon returning to the boat, we were happy to see other passengers on board. It was mostly older Europeans, but we found some younger people to hang out with. The meals (buffet style) were good, but there was not much in the way of vegetarian food. In addition, despite the lightly filled boat, there was often not enough food to go around. We learned quickly to load up on deserts as soon as we got there, or there wouldn’t be anything left. For some reason, the Europeans ate quickly. There goes that stereotype.

On the top deck of our Nile River Boat Cruise.

The boats go very, very slowly. We anchored just outside the Esna Locks, and immediately trinket sellers swarmed the boat.

Displaying their goods to the cruise boat passengers.

The thin strip of green along the Nile River.

Our boat was called the Aton and was run by Selection Hotel. It's not a conventional cruise boat, it's more like a floating hotel.

Our room was huge (for a boat). It was on the bottom floor, and was pretty cold, and the carpet was a little funky.. well, at least it wasn't too bright in the room. As everywhere, there was no full size beds, so we just had to put them together and deal with The Great Divide. And wake up and bang our head on the wall lamp. On the last day, we realized that we would have been better off just sleeping with our feet under the lamp, of course.

We actually believe the interior designer for this room might have been color blind.

We visited Karnak Temple a couple of times. It was a big highlight of the trip. Unfortunately, the first time we visited was marred by the guy to the right of me. That's our tour guide. Talking on his cell phone. As always.

We finally established that we were never to join another group – he was our tour guide for the entire cruise. When we got back to the boat, we called Hamis Travel to complain. Their Luxor rep of course wanted to meet us in person to discuss (this seems to be a cultural difference – all discussions must take place in person, and not on the phone!). So we met him on a street corner, and he told us he would take care of it.

The Upper Egypt Travel bus we took from Hurghada to Luxor.

The scenery to Luxor is more desert, but still pretty. When we booked our hotel in Luxor, the hotel owner had warned us that when we step off the bus, hotel touts will swarm us, try to tell us his hotel is full, or closed, or burned down last night, etc. It wasn’t that bad, we shook them off fairly easily. Rather than deal with more dishonest cabbies, we walked the half hour to the Happy Land Hotel.

We were disappointed to hear that the rate he had quoted us was "per person" – so double what we thought it was. Our guess is that he doubled our rate because A) We looked tired and didn’t look like we were going to change hotels B) We had told him we were going to go on a cruise the next day (not booked through him). A lot of the budget hotels make most of their money off arranging tours for their guests, and sell them pretty hard. He was right, we couldn’t be bothered to fight. He tried to also charge us for the free breakfast, but we stood our ground on this one and got our crappy free breakfast.

However, the room was immaculate – the cleanest room we stayed in in Egypt (apart from the Sheraton). Make sure if you stay here though to ask for a room on the upper floors – our room was right beside reception and there was lots of reception and street noise. We headed outside and walked down the Corniche (the road that straddles the Nile) to Luxor Temple. We took some good evening photos, and met Gord from www.waywardtraveller.org. Always good to meet another traveler on the road, especially a fellow Canuck!

We ate at the Amoun Restaurant, which is a tourist restaurant 5 minutes away from the Luxor Temple. It’s an outdoor restaurant, service was fast, and the food was good.