Shady Goings On

Day 1
Arrived in Luxor just after sunset, and it was absolutley baking! The airport was manic, with tour operators waving clipboards and shouting, organised chaos. This was our first flavour of Egypt, and has been pretty much the same since. Everyone wants tipping for everything, we nearly ran out of money before we even got to the hotel! I was dammed if we were going to give 50LE (Egyptian pounds) to some kid for putting our bags on the roof of the bus!
The hotel is lovely, everyone is nice and friendly and there is air con, and we have a double bed It’s fairly central to town too, but this means you get hassled as soon as you step outside with shouts of ‘Taxi?’.

Day 2
Had a lie in after the long flight over, and woke up to a beautiful scene over the Nile from our balcony. Breakfast was a typical continental breakfast apart from some hot additions such as meatballs and crepes. We were then scooted off for the meeting with the rep to introduce themselves and sell us what they can, we immediatley booked the balloon ride and Falahs Tent (a Faluca ride on the Nile and, a meat buffet with entertainment).
We spent the rest of daylight hours by the pool. Oh and I beat Alison at chess I’m sure she’ll beat me right back though.
Felahs Tent turned out to be quite good fun, the ride up the Nile was fanastic with a great sunset. The food was also great, with free wine, and the entertainment was funny. We had some local dancing followed by a snake charmer and belly dancer, then a spinning bloke with three skirts. We have pictures.

Day 3
Last night was quite a late one so we had another lie in and late breakfast: about 8:30. Because of the heat everyone seems to get up for 5:00am and be back indoors before the midday sun from 11:00 till 3:00, then be back out later. Apart from us. Instead we looked round Luxor Temple, a massive temple only discovered recently. I don’t know how they missed it! This took us up till about 1:30 and the heat drove us back to the pool for lunch.
We did mean to go out for dinner, and brave the local cuisine but there was xXx on the movie channel so we ended up going to the restaurant in the hotel and eating there. Sad eh?

Day 4
A disappointment to start the day today, as we were up for 4:30 to be picked up to go on our balloon ride booked earlier in the week. However, because of the wind (i.e. there isn’t any) it was cancelled. We’ll try and arrange it for tomorrow, but we’ll have to juggle a bit.
We made our way down to Rainbow Internet past many street traders etc and here we are now. The time is running out, and we’ll rejoin our ‘friend’ outside who will try take us somewhere or sell us something. We hope to upload the camera photos before we leave though, so we have more room, and so you can see them.

Keep you posted…