h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Did you enjoy the voyage to Egypt? And happy belated anniversary.

Hi there! Sorry it's taken a while to answer, but we only got back today.

The trip was pretty good, thanks for asking. There were three parts: 4 nights cruising on Lake Nasser, 7 nights cruising on the Nile and 3 nights in Cairo. The Lake Nasser cruise was the best part. The tour guide really knew his stuff. The boat was like something out of 'Death on the Nile' (I assume you know the film) - real 5-star comfort, service and food. Somebody told our tour guide that it was our anniversary later in the holiday, and he told the boat staff, and they made us a cake to celebrate on the last night! The boat moored right outside the temples at Abu Simbel and we were able to watch the 'Sound and Light' show from the top deck of the boat for free! (Normal price, LE 55 (Egyptian pounds, in case you didn't know), which is about £11 or $16.) The boat was the MS Prince Abbas, so if you ever want to do a Lake Nasser cruise, try to get onto that boat.

The Nile cruise was fine as far as the excursions went (the tour guide was a freelance Egyptologist who also worked as a tour guide - obviously, he knew his stuff), and the accomodation on the boat was nice, but there were a few niggles. The restaurant staff could best be described as surly, the food was monotonous and certainly not 5-star quality (which is what we'd been led to expect), and there was canned music throughout the boat (with the obvious exception of the cabins) which drove me up the wall. One bright note was the guy who made up our room every day. Each day he'd make some kind of animal with a spare towel and/or blanket. The first day it was a cobra, the second day it was two swans. That day we thanked him for making them, and told him we took pictures of them. After that his imagination ran riot and he started using any odd bits and pieces we'd left lying around. One day he did a sort of bear using the spare blanket, a couple of spare towels, a sweat-shirt I'd brought along, and Richard's sun-glasses. The bear was 'reading' one of my books. Another day he did a crocodile out of the spare blanket, a few spare towels (including my beach towel!) and Richard's sun-glasses (again). On the last day we gave him LE20 as a tip. It's only £4 or $6, but it's a lot of money over there. We really felt he'd earned it.

We stayed at the Sheraton Royal Gardens in Giza, only a few miles from the Pyramids (but not close enough to see them from our hotel room). It's a very nice hotel, constructed so as to minimise the intrusion of traffic noise - Cairo is a very noisy city. It has about 4 times the number of cars it can reasonably cope with and everybody drives like a maniac, with their horns going all the time. Richard has been to Italy, and he reckons that Egyptian drivers make Italian drivers seem sane. We visited the Cairo Museum (not the best museum in the world, IMHO), the Pyramids and the Sphinx, and went to the Khan al Khalili on Saturday night. The Khan is in the old part of Cairo and is a sort of bazaar or market area. In some ways it's very 'touristy', in that a lot of the shops and stalls are geared towards selling souvenirs of various kinds - anything from gold jewellery to statues of the various Egyptian gods, to pictures on papyrus (often fake papyrus). However, if you shop around and are prepared to haggle (essential in Egypt) you can get some bargains. We bought a backgammon / draughts (checkers) set made of inlaid wood with camel bone playing pieces for LE50 (£10 or £15). It's a beautiful set and worth every penny.

How did your house move go? Are you settled now? Have you managed to get all the furniture you need? Have you got your dog yet?

(PS Somebody told the staff at the Sheraton that it was our anniversary on the day we arrived. They left a beautiful chocolate cake in our room. Unfortunately, we only ate half of it by the following morning, and they cleared it away while we were out, the rotten things! It was absolutely delicious, though. Oh, and the tour guide we had in Cairo was cr@p!)