The bus to Luxor was half an hour late. We were lucky to get seats. You can’t buy seats in advance (as it’s not an originating point), so there’s just a mad scramble to get seats as the bus pulls in. A family we met on the bus told us that they hadn’t been able to get on the bus the previous day as it was full. Take *that*, schedule!  The bus was in pretty rough shape. Ian’s seat had no back spring, so if he leaned back it would fall over on the person behind him. The front door was broken, and the back door had to be forced closed with an iron bar while the bus was moving.

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.

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