MyWorldReviews.com

Trafalgar Tour - Best of Egypt

Day 3 - Karnak and Luxor Temples

Egypt

Breakfast Box at the Fairmont Heliopolis Hotel

Karnak Temple

A small glass of habiscus tea

An example of the itinerary board on the boat

We needed to wake up early, since our luggage was being picked up outside our room at 3:45a. After dropping off the luggage, we went down to the lobby and picked up a "breakfast box" that was waiting for each member of our group. Our group consisted of 10 people, and we soon met our tour guide.

Our tour guide's name was Sameh (Sam, for short). He had Trafalgar tags for each of us to put on our bags. The bags were loaded on a bus, which we boarded shortly after. The bus took us to the airport. On the way, another Trafalgar representative requested payment for the optional tours that we wanted to take. We paid with a credit card without any problems.

In the Cairo Airport, our bags were x-rayed, but the security guards ignored the beeping metal detectors as we all walked through. The tour guide obtained boarding passes for everyone, and distributed them. We only needed to wait ten or fifteen minutes before boarding out flight to Luxor (which left at 6:00a).

After obtaining our luggage, we were immediately taken to Karnak Temple. It was astounding. Our luggage was taken to the boat, so we didn't need to worry about it. Our tour guide talked to us about the temple for a little bit, then gave us 50 minutes to walk around on our own. What an unbelievable experience.

We left Karnak Temple around 11:00a, and were taken to the MS Norma Boat that was waiting for us in the Nile. We had some "habiscus tea" as a welcome drink. It was like a very mild cranberry juice - quite nice, actually. At this time, we also handed over our passports, and exchanged them for our room key on the boat. We were told we could pick up our passports the following day. There were no problems with that. We were also informed that there was a board at the front of the ship that had our itinerary for the day (in case we forgot). A sample picture of that board is shown here.

We went to our room on the boat, and relaxed for a few minutes before lunch. Lunch was scheduled at 12:30p. Lunch was buffet style. It was certainly adequate, with a few nice items (like fresh dates!), but it wasn't spectacular, and we grew tired of the same food selection quite quickly.

After lunch, we had more free time. We walked across the street to an internet cafe, where we paid 20 LE for one hour of internet usage. We also thought we'd go for a walk, but there were a lot of very aggressive "sales people" there who wanted us to (a) take a taxi, (b) take a carriage ride, (c) visit their shop, or (d) just give them money. There was a very cute boy who pleaded with us for money. He put very pretty flowers in our hands, and we felt bad, so eventually we gave him a bit of money. Once we demonstrated that we were willing to give him money, he, of course, wanted more. He was a very skilled negotiator, and if we had more money on us, we probably would have given it to him (just to make him go away).

At 3:30p, it was "tea time" on the top of the boat. We were offered some tea, coffee, and a small little piece of a very dry cake.

At 4:00p, we again boarded the bus to visit Luxor Temple. It wasn't as impressive as the Karnak Temple Complex, but still was pretty amazing!

After touring Luxor Temple, we went to a Papyrus Shop, where we received a short lesson on how papyrus was made, and were then given an opportunity to browse the shop and make purchases. We purchased two small pieces of papyrus that were nicely painted - each one cost us 50 LE. (The medium pieces cost between 100 - 200 LE, and larger pieces went up from there to 2000 LE).

The bus took us back to the boat at 6:50p, and we waited until 7:30p for dinner. As with lunch, dinner was a pretty good buffet-style meal, but it wasn't spectacular. It was a long and exhausting day today, so immediately after dinner, we went to the room and fell asleep.