Up the Nile…
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008From Aswan, we took a two day cruise along the Nile to Luxor. The first evening, we sat on the boat and truly relaxed… there’s nothing like relaxing next to a pool, reading a book on a warm Egyptian evening, while the sun sets over the mountains in the distance. It was quite peaceful. The food was decent, although you don’t expect too much from a cruise. The next day we stopped in a town on the way to do some sight seeing, etc. We noticed that when you are on your own and away from the big tour groups, the touts and hawkers are much less aggressive. When we were leaving the boat, however, or travelling next to the big groups, we noticed that the touts, rickshaw drivers, etc, would go as far as getting right in your face, or pull on your arm, or jockey for position with others for your attention. We did our best to ignore it all, as usual, it tended to be best to say “No thanks” once and ignore the rest.
We arrived in Luxor and were very impressed with the Luxor temple. It’s very large and well lit at night. After a good night sleep, we woke up and decided to rent bicycles for the day. There are many expensive tours to see the tombs and such but it is not that far away so we decided to make our own bicycle tour of it. We found that by doing it on a bike, we were able to appreciate more of the surroundings and also get to see some of the small villages that normally you might simply wiz past on a massive tour bus. We had a blast and felt happy that we got a bit exercise as well!
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