Abu-Simbel

We flew to Aswan, via Luxor, then onto Abu-Simbel. Juice box on each of  the 4 legs 🙂

Side Bar: Egypt Air dont really subscribe to the idea that the safety video needs to be finished prior to the actual take off. On 2 occasions we were in the air before the video was half way through.

Got to Abu-Simbel, it was 42 degrees in the shade, and as you can’t take liquids on the flight, we didn’t have sunscreen on us. Surprisingly we got out of it largely unscathed.

Abu-Simbel is simply amazing. Two massive temples, cut into rock, not made from rock, that had to be taken apart (cut) in 20-60 tonne blocks, and moved 180 metres up a hill due to the Nile dam and the lake Nasser that formed because of it.

This Dam would have put a whole bunch of temples under water unless they were moved so Egypt asked the world for help to save them.

Flew back to Aswan and transferred to our hotel, the ‘Old Cataract Hotel’.

This is the hotel made famous by the Agatha Christie book and later movie, Death on the Nile.

We had a nice room, with a view to the new cataract hotel and the pool an to the Nile.

As we only had one night here we quickly got settled and headed to the pool for a quick dip and a beer.

We had a feluca ride prior to sunset and on return we had High Tea on the edge of the nile watching the sunset.

This was spectacular.  We sat with our friends, Gail and Susan, and had a bit of a laugh with Tommy and one of the waiters that played a trick on me.

Previously we’d booked dinner for the 4 of us at the famous 1902 restaurant. There is a strict dress code that I didn’t meet. The waiter that was playing tricks had hooked us up so that we could get in so we we’re all sweet.

Dinner was sensational.  We had the set menu which was about 45 euro pp. We also had a bottle of white wine, called ‘Obelisk’.  Food consisted of crab spring rools, followed by a milky chicken and sweet corn soup. The mains were either Sea Bass, or a Lamb Curry. Kath had the lamb the rest of us had the fish. Desert was either chocolate cake/mousse thing, or fruit salad.

Has been a very, very long day and with a 7am start in the morning, we went straight to bed.

Love, k & k.