After being in Cairo for 2.5 weeks, I was seriously excited to get out into the countryside… The noise, pollution, traffic etc all takes a bit of getting used to! And I’m not quite there yet… And it was the Eid festival, so we had 19 – 22 Dec off…

So we headed to Luxor - a place I can recommend for anyone over the age of 50, or anyone who seriously wants to chill out…

A one hour flight from Cairo (Luke decided a 5am flight would be a good option – “we would have the rest of the day to explore”), and 20 minute drive to the Steinberger Nile Palace hotel – where we climbed into bed and slept until 10.30…

I’m slowly learning that hotels are all massive in Egypt (like 600 – 1200 rooms), and they are all big names (Hilton, Four Seasons, Hyatt, Intercontinental) - so nothing is terribly personal. But this suits us – staff in hotels still can’t understand that Luke and I want a double bed in our room, even though we are not married. I have been called all versions of surnames - and Luke was called Mr (my surname) – which he thought was particularly annoying!

Anyway, our trip in a nutshell included:

- lots of lounging by the pool (even though I didn’t think it was going to be warm enough so didn’t pack a cossie)

- lots of sleeping

- a hot air balloon ride (over the farmlands and Nile)

- a day of touring: we saw the Valley of the Queens, Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsuit’s temple and Karnak ruin

- a day of playing golf (on an 18 hole golf course where we were the only people playing the whole day – bliss!)

- a felucca ride and a carriage ride through the town

We got back to Cairo at 8.30 pm on Saturday night (the equivalent of a Sunday night at home) to be met by our driver at the airport. We then decided we needed to do a grocery shop for the week… Can you believe that we can do grocery shopping until 11pm at night, and the shop was seriously busy? Crazy I tell you… (To give you an example of how busy – the gates around City Stars shopping centre were closed and being manned by guards. There was a queue to be let into the centre, because it was so full they were having to restrict access. But you need to understand that this centre is at least 2 times the size of Sandton City!)

Welcome back to crazy Cairo – it hadn’t felt like we had left!