Posted on

Nile Cruise Offers – 50% Offer Due To Finish

Royal Viking Nile Cruise RestaurantThe exceptional “Book a Nile Cruise and Get The 2nd Person 50% Off” offer is due to finish this Saturday the 13th of August.

If you havent’ seen the offer then let me briefly tell you about it again:

If you book a Nile Cruise on either the Viking Princess, the Royal Viking, the Royal Ruby or the Alexander The Great then you will pay full price for the first person and get a 50% reduction for the second person.

That offer is for Nile cruises departing between September 2011 and October 2012 on the Royal Ruby and for Nile cruises departing bewteen October 2011 and October 2012 on the Viking Princess, Royal Viking and Alexander The Great Nile cruise ships.

Continue reading “Nile Cruise Offers – 50% Offer Due To Finish”

Posted on

Nile Cruise – Our Journey home

I am writing this mid-flight aboard our Monarch flight back to Manchester. I’m at the point in any flight where I have read bits of my magazine, listened to music and various podcasts on my iPhone and tried in vain to sleep.

I’ve had a glass of red wine and had my inflight meal and now I’m bored STIFF! I have never been able to sit still for very long so I’m trying to think of the exercises I need to do on a flight to stop deep-vein thrombosis. Trouble is I can’t remember them and so I keep flexing my calf muscles, flexing my feet in and out and trying to stretch my thighs…all whilst sitting in my seat. The guy next to me must think I’ve either got a bladder problem and need to keep fidgeting or that I fancy him as my right leg keeps touching left leg inadvertently. I’d better starting speaking to Barbara who’s sitting across the aisle, in a very deep and manly way!!

I guess the only way I’ll know if I’ve suffered a deep-vein thrombosis will be when the plane lands and I stand up and my legs don’t! Guess I’d just have shuffle off the plane on my backside.

We met a whole bunch of our clients at Luxor Airport and thankfully every single one of them had had a wonderful trip and loved every second of their Nile cruise holiday. Each of them have told us they will send us a testimonial to add to the Nile-Cruises-4u website and all of them said how welcoming they found the Egyptian people.

Yesterday Barbara and I visited 4 of the leading hotels in Luxor including the Sofitel Karnak, the Maritim Jolie Ville, the Sonesta St. George and the Old Winter Palace. All excellent hotels that you could spend a wonderful week’s holiday enjoying brilliant sunshine at a fraction of the cost you would spend if you chased guaranteed sunshine as far as the Caribbean. I’ll add full descriptions and photographs of the hotels over the next week or so.

Now it’s time to try and fill in time for the rest of the flight in some unique way I haven’t thought of yet. Perhaps the stewardesses would let me help serve the next drinks service?

Posted on

Edfu and The Temple of Horus

Yesterday we were taken by horse and carriage to The Temple of Horus at Edfu. This form of transport is a great way to travel as long as your driver doesn’t think he’s employed by the Pony Express to deliver the US mail in record time.

Our driver seemed to feel that he would please us more by taking the journey at a gallop whenever the traffic would allow. But we reached the temple in one piece and on our return journey he gave us the sedate carriage ride we really wanted.

Our Egyptologist explained the history of seemingly the best preserved temple in Egypt and explained the reason was because for hundreds and hundreds of years it was covered in sand which helped preserve the exterior and interior as perfectly as it is.

He also hit the spot with me when he explained that this was the temple that celebrated the 21 day “Festival of Drunkeness” ( and I would suggest “silly dancing”). Sounds just the place for me!

A nice part of the Nile cruises that Barbara and I have enjoyed previously have been our table companions. This cruise has been no different and we have shared our 8 person table with 3 other interesting and lovely couples. From Helensborough in Scotland there is Patti and Roy who are enjoying their honeymoon on board ship. From Bath there is Linda and John and from Harrogate there is Melissa and Chris. All of them have travelled extensively throughout the world but all of them always harboured a desire to visit Egypt and cruise the Nile. They have all said that both the Royal Viking and the excursions have more than lived up to their expectations. Chris and Melissa are off to Cairo tomorrow for 3 nights and then travel on to El Gouna on the Red Sea for a further 4 nights. The rest of us fly home tomorrow.

We have had some really fun evenings together sitting out on the sundeck under the stars in the warm night air just talking, laughing and swapping stories about our travels and the mishaps that life throws at you.

I’m writing this on Sunday, again up on the sundeck, enjoying a cappuccino in the warm air of Luxor. Later we are going to visit some of the hotels in Luxor that we sell in order to get a better knowledge and feel for each property.

Tomorrow we sadly have to leave Egypt and fly home and on Tuesday re-open the Nile-Cruises-4u offices and get back to normal. In the meantime it’s another coffee for me and a last few hours of relaxation aboard the excellent Royal Viking.

Posted on

Depart for Luxor

We have arrived in Luxor after a good flight with Monarch from Manchester. We stayed overnight at the excellent Premier Inn. Great price, nice hotel and spotlessly clean. The receptionist told us that the shuttle bus was £4 each to the airport whilst a taxi was just £6. If you take the shuttle you have to struggle on and off with your cases plus wait for it to arrive whereas a taxi takes you straight to the terminal and you have no struggle with cases or waiting times. So it was a taxi transfer that took about 10 minutes.

The only problem was that instead of arriving at the flight desk at our normal time of 3 hours before we left it to 2 hours. Bad move as we were at the back of a long queue and there were 4 long queues. Normally we are at the front of the queue and have no waiting. This time we were actually the last people to check in and we were the last people to board the plane. Luckily we had good seats in row 3 so we weren’t right at the back if the plane.

Flight was delayed by an hour because of fog but the captain made up time and we arrived just 30 minutes late. After a smooth transfer through the airport we finally boarded our cruise ship, the excellent Royal Viking Nile cruise ship which is where I’m txting this now. We have a lovely upper deck cabin and we are just about to go down for dinner.

Early start tomorrow so we’ll probably have an early night.

To finish…I would definitely recommend the Premier Inn at Manchester Airport. I would suggest you ask the hotel reception the difference in costs between the shuttle and a taxi and I would always turn up early for check-in.

Posted on

The Pharaoh Who Conquered The Sea

Just in case you havent’ spotted this:
Â
Tonight BBC4 are broadcasting what looks like a fascinating programme for anyone who’s interested in Ancient Egypt.Â
Â
Entitled “The Pharaoh Who Conquered The Sea“, here is the programme’s description:
Â
Hatshepsut
Â
“Hatshepsut was the first female pharaoh. During her reign 3500 years ago, she supposedly dispatched five huge ships across the Red Sea to other countries, as depicted in a vast relief at Luxor.  Some, however, believe this is a mere myth.
 Â
To test whether it would have been feasible, a team of archaeologists attempts to reconstruct the voyage, building replica vessels using only period technology.  It’s part insight into the enigma of a very early feminist icon, part watching people build a giant model kit”.
Â