A Day in Luxor, and Boarding The Good Ship MS Mayfair....

I have a day to spare in Luxor until I board my cruise ship late in the afternoon so I have plenty of time for a wander around and stick my nose into places it really shouldn't go..... 

Did I say somewhere you don't get hassled?? Well in Luxor you will, by boatman and carriage drivers. Indeed until you get the hang of getting rid of them it does quite spoil the walk along the Corniche on the Nile Bank,

especially in the stretch from the Museum to just down past The Winter Palace.

It seems to be a common misconception with a lot of Egyptians that because somebody is there on holiday it means they have got a lot of money. Well I am there because it is cheap, and so are a lot of other people..... I found that the best thing to do was engage them in a bit of conversation completely avoiding the fact that they are trying to get you on to their felucca or into their horse drawn carriage. Some of the carriages are genuine antiques by the way held together with ''Pop rivets'' and bits of rope... Having passed the time of day you can then happily walk off leaving them wondering what has happened.

This was the day I met Abdul.

Abdul has a felucca, and unless you like sailing in small boats you don't really want to go on one, but Abdul is not that keen on doing much. He quoted me a ridiculous price of US$300 for an hour. I had already asked them in the hotel how much it should be, GBP20 or maybe US$30 at most.... if you really want to take a sail on a felucca then by all means do, it is part of the Egyptian experience, and you will be sailing in a vessel the design of which has not changed much in a 1000 years. Indeed some of them look as though they have been around that long! Just don't pay too much!

Continuing my walk I realised that what actually happens is that as soon as you have got rid of one boatman another one will appear so it takes a while for them all to realise that you are just not doing it!

The carriage drivers are even more persistent. Returning back towards my hotel I come across Abdul again, so I ask him where is a good place to get coffee.... He shows me, but for that information I have to buy him a coffee, and breakfast as it turns out. Food is cheap so don't worry about it.....

There is a market in Luxor... 
I love markets! 

And I have to buy saffron....

Abdul knows just the the right shop, (it probably belongs to a cousin so he gets a cut out of the sale, but who cares?)
Lead on Adbul, there he is looking to see that I am following....

This is still the ''touristy'' end of the market, you can go further and find all the fruit and veg and so on, and it gets cheaper as well!!

There is also the famous camel market.... Another day.... I get my saffron EGP 25.00 per gram (about GB£1), and I have bought 20 grams, buying it by the gram makes it sound like some sort of drug, but it is one of the most expensive spices in the world, and you don't need a lot of it.

And it is time for coffee again, and Abdul needs feeding again.... I think I mentioned that donkeys are a common sight in Egypt? Well the same goes for horses, even in the middle of towns you will find horses still used as transport, and they have diggers as well.... 

And you see a lot of these Chinese motor bikes. But it is getting towards the time when I have to go back to my hotel and collect my luggage and wait for somebody to pick me up to take me to my Nile cruise ship, a lot of the Nile fleet are ''laid up'' and it is a fair bet that this one will not be going anywhere in the near future....

I don't know why..... But for some reason boarding a ship always seems to be chaotic. Coming to Greece by ferry from Italy seems to involve driving down backstreets in the dodgy parts of town, (Piraeus is even worse), and there doesn't seem to be any system to it all. I found the same in Punta Arenas in Chile, I was told to wait at a certain dock gate, and an hour after we were due to sale somebody arrived and let us in the the docks... 

Here is it the same, and because they moor the ships side by side out into the Nile you have to walk through two other ships to get to yours, minus luggage of course because that has already disappeared... But finally I am on board the MS Mayfair, a relatively new vessel. I have already asked if there is a passenger called Poirot on board and got a blank look. It i a lot smarter than the ship boarded by Peter Ustinov in the film of ''Murder on the Nile''....

And I get to see my first Nile sunset...

I did wonder how they were going to organise us into groups allowing for several different languages, but at dinner it became clear that we were divided up by language each with its own guide, so in my group there are 6 of us, all English, two couples and 2 singles.

The two couples are travelling together and already I am a bit jealous because they started their trip off by staying at Mena House in Cairo, part of the Agatha Christie route that I didn't follow, but copious amounts of wine, (there are some very good Egyptian reds), thawed us out and got us away from the '''first day at school'' atmosphere. WE also found out that not all passengers are created equal, as one of the couples is not on the drinks included package. This didn't stop the waiter pouring them glasses of wine!! The food at dinner is distinctly ''western'' and I am a great one for cooking my veggies ''al dente'', but the green beans were positively rock hard.... Heigh ho, luckily we didn't get green beans every day!

And tomorrow morning we are off on our Nile Cruise....

The Nile Cruise Part The 1st., Valley Of The Kings, Temple of Hapshetsut,

It is the first day of the cruise except we haven't gone anywhere yet because the first stop is the Valley of The King's, which is on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor..... The ancient city of Thebes was located here.

And at this point I have to go into the pros and cons of taking one of these cruises. First I recommend that you take the full 7 night trip to Aswan and back to Luxor because you get to see more, and as an extra plus being on board ship you do not have to worry about finding breakfast lunch, and dinner.

And the biggest plus it getting a guide thrown in for free, (well not quite, because you have to tip him at the end of the cruise!).

On the downside you have 200+ people all doing the same sightseeing trips, along with the other cruise ships doing the same itinerary, and this tends to make for crowds wherever you are going, and also limits your time at each place. But it depends how ''in depth'' your want your experience to be, and how interested you are in it all....

The Valley of the Kings is probably one of the most famous sites in Egypt after Giza, every man and his dog goes there....... The ticket you have (pre-purchased by the guide so you don't have to queue for a ticket), allows you entrance into three tombs. Which tombs varies daily because they are not all open at the same time. Entrance to some of the more famous tombs, like Tutankhamun's and

Ramesses VI's are not included on the normal ticket. 

In other words you can expect a lot of people 
around....

To be going on with some more pictures of the treasures from King Tut's tomb on display in the Egyptian Museum...

And the best of luck fighting your way through the tourist bazaar when you go in and out from the main gate to the car park, if you are sneaky there is a way around it!

Cameras are not allowed, but unfortunately this does not extend to mobile phones, and although you are not allowed to use them you will find people (our Japanese friends again), blocking up the walk ways taking selfies which really is unfair on the rest of us that follow the rules.... 

On the day I visited there was a new tomb opened for the first time, that of Ramasses IX, which had never been open before so I got a bit of a treat there! The tomb of Seti I was also open that day but it is a long deep tomb with lots of stairs and I don't do stairs so I was happy to forego that one and spent some time talking to our guide instead. (Guides are not allowed inside the tombs by the way). And don't worry if you are a bit claustrophobic like me, most of the tombs have high ceilings, are airy, and have lots of lighting and the wall paintings and hieroglyphics are so interesting it will take your mind of things! 

Leaving the Valley of the King's heading for the Temple of Hatshepsut we pass by an alabaster workshop, quite a lot of these tours include visits to papyrus or linen workshops, you don't have to buy anything and quite often the free coffee is excellent! 

From a distance the Temple of Hatshepsut is impressive and has some things of interest, according to our guide, not least of all is the fact that the people we can see running about on the surrounding cliffs are soldiers from the army base over the hill.

 Hatshepsut ruled Egypt as a man but was actually a woman, her tomb is in the Valley of The King's rather than the Valley of the Queen's, possibly I would imagine because she was a ruler and not the wife of a ruler, if you see what I mean...

Me in my Howard Carter hat looking every part of the ecccentric...

Last stop of day 1 is the Colossi of Memnon quite spectacular in themselves and part of the history of the surrounding area much of which is now lost. Perhaps one of the interesting features is that the stones used came from a quarry near Cairo 420 miles away, and supposedly are too heavy to have been brought via ship on the Nile so would have come overland.

My mind springs to Stonehenge of course, which is older, but with stones brought from Wales. You can do anything if you have the will and sufficient manpower.




Returning to the ship I find this ensconced on my bed.