We got down to reception a bit early but the tour guy was already there (this was the guy who met us at the airport). The hotel was kind enough to prepare some breakfast boxes for our travel. Score!
While getting into the bus, we noticed there were others already on from another hotel. We were the last stop, so thankfully we got to sleep in the longest!
After finishing the breakfast box, we arrived at the airport. Our tour guy pretty much babied us through the whole check in process. To our surprise, we were flying business class. I was filled with both sadness and joy. Joy, because it is the first time I have EVER flown business class. Sadness because out of all the flights I have ever been on, it's the shortest. A pathetic 45 minutes. The plane hardly gets to full altitude before it starts to descend again...
The plane landed, and as with every other flight we have ever been on, we waited to let the impatient people out (especially since you have to get into a bus and stand anyway). But turns out that in business class, they don't let the cattle out until we've gone. Crap, so we had to quickly get our stuff and move out. The cool thing is that the business class bus leaves as soon as the business class people are on. So you get a seat and don't have to wait. But again, this isn't as good as it sounds because you still have to wait for your bags. And since we were the first to get off, we had to stand in the stupid baggage hall with everyone else waiting for the bags to even start coming rather than be in our comfy business class chairs. Once we finally got the bags, it was time to experience Luxor! The first stop was our cruise boat, the MS Nile Dolphin. This was an upgrade to the one that we were supposed to be on because it must have been more cost efficient for the tour company to just put us with the other people on the tour so score!
The number of ships on the river was amazing! Our ship was the closest to the dock but there were five boats docked abreast of each other so passengers on the other ships had to walk through our reception area to get to theirs which was quite cool. There were probably about 20 boats docked in the area where we were but our guide told us that there were about 500 ships that sail this section of the Nile with at least 100 ships sailing at any point in time. Crazy!
We got the to ship and went straight to the bar. More because that's where we were told to go and meet, not so much because we're alcos. After some administration stuff, we went to our rooms. These were pretty nice. Much better than many hotel rooms I've been in. Lunch was still a little while away, so we started with an exploration of the boat. We found the following:
- 1st floor - Dining area.
- 2nd floor - Reception and rooms for the guides
- 3rd floor - shops and guest rooms
- 4th floor - the bar and guest rooms (our room was on this one)
- Up top - outside bar, sitting areas, deck chairs (both unshaded / shaded. So really Europeans / everyone else) and most importantly a pool!
After finding the pool, the number one priority was to get on the bathers, and get in it. The water was fantastic. The weather was so hot, and the water was so warm. But in the water, it was just right. I don't think I have ever been in pool or beach water that is too warm.
Lunch time came, so we went to the dining floor and got allocated our table. There were heaps of tables with heaps of people, but turns out that there are many different tours for many different languages. Our English speaking tour had only 14 people. All the people are pretty cool. There were us, 5 other Australians, a family of 3 Canadians and 2 Brits. No Americans, which surprised me a little. I think the other nationalities were Spanish and Italian, but I obviously hadn't talked to them about that.
It was now time for our first ancient Egyptian tour on the cruise. We met our guide (Ibrahim. Sounds like Abraham) and went to the Karnak temple. This place was massive. It wasn't so much one massive building, but a few buildings and halls mixed with open areas and a small lake. It was roughly the same size as a small theme park (Egyptopia perhaps). It was also incredibly hot, even though it was 3:00 in the afternoon.
To make things easier, our guide gave our group a name - Habibi, meaning darling or something along those lines in Arabic. We didn't get a choice in this name, he just gave it to us. I have a sneaking suspicion that he's used this name before, like, for every other tour group he has. When we asked him about this he laughed and said that we were "Special Habibis". Thanks.
From Karnak we went to Luxor temple which was smaller than Karnak but better preserved. There was a mosque on the top of one of the old ruins. Ibrahim explained that it was because when the Arabs had settled in Luxor, the temple was covered in sand so when they built their mosque, they didn't realise that it was being built on the ruins of the old temple. Luxor temple was also hot but in a different way. By the time we got to this temple the sun was setting so we didn't have to worry about hats, sunglasses and scarves so that was good. Unfortunately though, the whole temple was emanating heat from the stones that had been baking in the sun the whole day. Can't have everything I guess.
We finished up and went back to the ship and hung out in air conditioned comfort until dinner time. There was a belly dancing show on at 10:00 pm in the bar that evening but all thoughts of going to the show vanished when Ibrahim announced that we would be starting at 7:00 tomorrow morning, meaning a 5:45 am wake up call. After a 5:00 am start, the thought of a 5:45 wake up call really didn't sound appealing so we wrapped up the evening after dinner and had an early night.
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