It’s a thing of beauty and the graphics are just stunning.  I need it for the ability to create web content and to edit the masses of video footage that we obtained when we were took our last Nile Cruise and Cairo trip in November.  (Honestly…)

That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!

On our late November trip we had a great full day Giza and The Pyramids excursion with a wonderful guide called Ahmed,  our own driver and air-conditioned mini-bus.  We visited Memphis, Saqqara and the Great Pyramid at Giza.

What we didnt’ realise until we visited Saqqara is that the Great Pyramid wasnt’ the first or the oldest Pyramid.  That honour goes to the Step Pyramid at Saqqara which you can see above.

I, being a simple Scouser, initially thought that the reason it looks a little “rough” is because it was the ancient Egyptians first attempt (!) and that they got steadily better as they went along and built other Pyramids.  However, I soon realised that one of the main reasons it doesnt’ look as good as the Great Pyramid is because it’s also the oldest.

It’s probably their first large construction in stone and in some ways its’ probably one of the most important monuments in Egypt.

The full day’s excursion was great value at £63 per person including our own guide, driver and mini-bus and Ahmed was so knowledgable and such a nice guy we had a wonderful day and learnt so much.  He also knew the best vantage points for the best photo opportunities.  I’d highly recommend the tour, which you’ll find details of on our Cairo Excursions page.

We had a great time in both places of course but sitting here typing this out today as the snow falls outside the office and the UK comes to a grinding halt I can honestly say if I had to choose between the two destinations now I’d be back to Luxor like a shot.

I’m just hearing that Liverpool and Manchester Airports are closed and all flights have stopped and we were told last night that Liverpool had run out of grit which must have made travelling into work this morning a lot of fun!!

We’re located between Liverpool and Southport on the coast in a place called Formby and normally we get slightly different weather than Liverpool but the snow started about an hour ago and its already pretty white outside the office windows.

When we were travelling to Andorra on the 20th of December Manchester Airport was closing down as we checked in and we ended up eventually being coached down to Luton Airport and we finally arrived at our Andorran hotel 24 hours later than was planned.  During that time we were on three planes (that didnt’ take off) and two different coaches, sleeping when and where we could.  So I really feel for those passengers trying to get out of Liverpool and Manchester Airports today.

The funny thing is, looking back on the experience, we actually had a lot of fun whilst the chaos was going on and the holiday we enjoyed when we finally reached our destination was fabulous.  Perhaps one of the best family holidays we have ever had.  I suppose it’s all down to your approach to things.  The old “glass half full – glass half empty” approach to life.

Anyway today’s photo is of Barbara and her tasteful day-glow orange ski outfit standing on the snowy slopes of Arinsal, Andorra.  I know its’ not very “nile cruisey” but I just thought it matched the weather we are all experiencing today.

That way I know that as the Flip Video Camera fills up with video footage I can upload it to the netbook and, where possible, upload it to our Nile Cruise Blog.

After a bit of resaerch I bought the Asus 109hHA. I think it has a 16gb hard drive, built in camera, etc and it’s really light. So it will be much easier than lugging around a heavy laptop.

Now I just need to find a Wordpress plugin that will automatically add new video footage onto the Nile Cruises 4u website.

So, back to the drawing board!

I’ve done a lot of searching on the web but haven’t seen any solution so we are planning to have to lug my laptop around.

But Barbara has come up with a suggestion that I think might work. She has suggested we buy a notebook pc and take that with us instead. Notebook are smaller and lighter than laptops and we could upload the footage to that to clear the Flip each night.

So I’ll be researching the best notebook I can get forvthe best price. If anyone has any recommendations I would be grateful for any advice at all.

The type of things that you cant’ see with the naked eye but hopefully make the website perform a lot better both in terms of the user’s point of view and also in terms of everything working a little faster, all the links working correctly and lots of little tweaks to try and ensure that we look “ok” to the search engine spiders.

Search engine optimisation as its’ called is a pretty esoteric art that seems to fascinate some people and just turn others off competely.

Search engine optimisation means ensuring that lots of little on-page and off-page tweaks are correctly in place with regard to your website to ensure that the major search engines place you highly in their search results.

It’s something I am quite fascinated by so it’s suits me to be playing around with the various things that can make a difference.  Anybody else would be pretty bored I think…but…horses for courses!

We enjoyed the hospitality of the Centenary Club where you have a lovely meal and some drinks before taking your seats to watch the match.

It was a great day and allowed to us to recharge our batteries.  It was Sami Hypia’s last match for Liverpool and it was obviously very emotional for him as he appeared to break down in tears as he took his lap of honour.  It was great to see that the majority of the away supporters stayed to applaud him and all the Tottenham players made a point of congratulating him for his service to Liverpool FC.

My photo, taken on my iPhone, is of Sami Hypia and the whole of the Liverpool team with their children taking a lap of honour at the end of a great season which saw them nearly catch Man Utd for the league title.

For me, as a Liverpool supporter it was a great day.

Now, its’ back to selling Nile Cruises!!

It will also mean it’s easier to deliver “online”.

The Guide has been downloaded over 3500 times now but I’m sure if we change the delivery to a PDF file it will help a lot more people who a researching Nile cruises to download it more easily.

I’ve almost finished the re-write but I wonder if anyone could recommend the best software to actually create the finished format?

This is a panoramic view of a pretty empty Nile Cruises 4u office, after closing time.   You can just about see Barbara up at the end of the office.

Why post this pic?

Well it’s the first “panoramic” photo taken with my new iPhone using the “Pano” application bought for £1.59 from the Itunes Application store.

You take a series of photos and “Pano” merges them together.  Imagine what fantastic photos you could take take with an iPhone using “Pano” on your Nile Cruise? You could take fantastic photographs of the Nile riverbank from your cruise ship or take amazing photographs at the Valley Of The Kings or at Abu Simbel.

Usually, when you take a photograph at these wonderful locations you just cannot get a wide enough angle with your camera and when you get back home and try and show other people there is just no way that they can get an idea of the size or the atmosphere of that location. With your iPhone using “Pano” you would be able to really capture those moments.

I cant’ wait for my next time on the Nile. I’ll be using “Pano” to try and get some great photographs.

At Nile Cruises 4u we’ve just upgraded to the Flip Mino HD Digital Camera and this video shows the set up that we use to create our Nile Cruise Podcast.

I mentioned in an earlier post how brilliant the Flip Digital Video Camera is.  Well a week or two ago I re-sold our original Flip Mino Digital Video camera on Amazon.co.uk for almost the same price as we had bought it for a few months earlier.

We sold it using the Amazon “Sell Yours” facility which is just brilliant.  In fact I bought the original Flip Mino from the proceeds of selling various books I had.  After I had sold about 15 books I had enough to buy the Flip Mino, which I was really pleased with.

But…almost as soon as I’d bought it I found out that Flip were just bringing out a High Definition version.  I then saw some of the results of the HD version and realised that I just had to have one.  So, after selling the original Flip Mino and a few more books I had enough to buy the new High Definition version.

And I’m really chuffed with it.

Here is a first attempt at using it for the blog.  It’s just a quick video I made describing the equipment I use to create the Nile Cruise Podcast.

We’ve been using Twitter for a fair number of months now and are using it increasingly to let people know about any developments or any great offers available within the Nile Cruise market place.

Our Twitter address is http://twitter.com/NileCruises

You can follow our “Tweets” (postings) by simply clicking on “follow” on our Twitter screen and keep up to date with developments here at Nile Cruises 4u.

If you are a Twitter user then I can recommend Tweetdeck which allows you to organise things so you can get the most out of using it.

(Hope all those mentions of tweets and twitter made sense!!).

If you want to know anything about who is visiting your website, what search term they used to find you, what search engine they used, how many times they have been on your website before, how long they stay, what pages they are looking at, etc, then WOOPRA cannot be beaten. 

The beauty of it is that it is “live” so you can see who is visiting your website whilst they are still on the site.

The reason I mention it is because there is a facility, which I have outlined in red on the screen-capture above, which allows me to “Start A Conversation“.  In other words I can click on that phrase and a window would open up on the visitors screen and I would be able to ask them if they wanted any assistance.

I havent’ done so yet as I am sure they would be taken completely by surprise if I did so and they might feel I was intruding.  However, I would be interested to know if anyone reading this would think that that would be a good facility to offer and whether I should use it to actually offer assistance whilst they are on the site, OR, if you feel it would put people off?

I’d be interested in your thoughts.

Prices are around the 700+ pounds mark, which is great for Christmas to be honest. Not sure seats will be there much longer but as of two minutes ago I was finding seats.

So…if you fancy Chrismas on the Nile…call me on Freephone 0808 1089 100

Here’s the details:

“In our new Ancient Egypt gallery you can journey back to the incredible world of the Pharaohs and discover the remarkable civilisation that built the Pyramids and the Sphinx. There are over 1,300 objects from our world-class collections on display, including animal mummies, ancient musical instruments and a tomb reconstruction based on a 4,000-year-old burial place.

There are five complete human mummies on display and you can even ‘unwrap’ a mummy without touching it, using a fascinating computer interactive. A must-see of object is the vividly-coloured belt of the last great Pharaoh, Rameses III, on permanent display for the first time since before the Second World War.

You can visit the exhibition at Liverpool’s “History Of The World Museum” in Wiiliam Brown Street.  (0151 478 4296).

We have always suggested a few books in the Nile Cruise Bookstore that we feel would be useful and interesting for anyone taking a Nile Cruise.

I’m a great reader and love reading travel books and watching travel tv programmes. (Good job I’m a travel agent then, eh?).

There is nothing I like more than reading up about a destination that I’m due to visit. It’s a great way to find out the places to see, places to eat, what’s happening in the area, etc. Plus it really puts you in the mood.

Well, we have just enlarged The Nile Cruise Store that we have on our main Nile Cruises website and here on the Nile Cruise Blog to now include more books as well as DVD’s and some “travel equipment” that we feel you might find useful.

I’ve included a couple of recommendations including the fabulous “Flip Digital Video Camera“, which I’ve taken on a number of trips and is probably the smallest, cheapest and most portable video camera you’ll find and the “Camelbak Hydration Pack” which is a great, convenient way to carry water with you.

I hope that you’ll find some interesting books and things in the store, and, if you have any suggestions that you think other travellers would be interested in please let me know and I’ll add them to the store.