-
Route plan
Egypt has been a
target for long time. I had checked the chances a lot of times and the
feeling was it was one of a few destinations where it wasn't worth your
while to go by your own. Flight rates were expensive and I had the
feeling of an Egyptair monopoly level which was advantaging to tour
operators. I even thought about taking a basic, but cheap, package for
travelling to Egypt just for using the planes because the package price
was cheaper than my price purchasing flight tickets.
Visiting Jordan, besides Egypt ,after making my investigation
about that country when the chance of a stopover there while traveling
to Thailand came up, make me look deeper. Also, some Jordan spots were
a dream for my parents, which I wanted to do this gift to.
Then I've found out one of the best european low cost
airlines,
Easyjet, has three destinations in Egypt: Luxor, Hurghada and Sharm El
Sheikh. Using these routes would save a lot of money on flights with
the disadvantage of be forced to spend two nights in London, one for
each way.
Somehow, as my plan started to be a route
I should look after arriving to one point and leaving from another
point. The route draft was an itinerary starting in Amman and ending in
Luxor.
The end in Luxor was pointed by the Nile
cruise, which seemed the most expensive of the whole travel. There are
two options here, stopping both on the same spots along the Nile trip:
4 nights from Luxor to Aswan or 3 nights from Aswan to Luxor. I don't
know if the difference in nights comes from sailing along or against
the river tide
or the timing
of Nile lock at Esna, but being the rates per person and night, you can
save one night by taking Aswan to Luxor route, so the cruise is 25%
cheaper and, obviously, you save a day too, which is a great advantage
when you are in a tight schedule.
I was starting to get
a clear draw: from an initial point of Amman, go all over Jordan, North
to South, then enter to Egypt from Sinai, then go to Cairo, then Aswan,
do the cruise and returning from Luxor with a night in Gatwick airport,
in London. The time seems optimized but still some loose ends to tie.
Additionally, I couldn't leave out the chance of visiting
Jerusalem. I thought on it from the beginning as a two days trip from
Jordan, as I could read a lot of people do, but finally Jerusalem
became the starting point when I found 100€ flights to Tel Aviv with
Spanair.
With all the commented points in mind,
the budget was fixed to 1500€ per couple, shared on three parts: 500€
for flights, 500€ for hotels and the last 500€ for Nile cruise.
The how-to's to solve were: going from Jerusalem to
Amman,
moving in Jordan, cross from Jordan to Egypt, Sinai trip to Cairo, trip
Cairo-Aswan, return trip to Abu-Simbel and hiring cruise by our own.
Just a few of questions...
Moving in Jordan was solved after reading there is
no problem on driving a rented car around that country.
I was not worried about Abu Simbel trip as it seemed easy to take a
cheap trip once in Aswan. I found a couple of local travel agencies
which let me hiring Nile cruises through Internet.
At the beginning it seemed the only way for going from Cairo to
Aswan was an Egyptair flight, but it was a pain paying more for the
internal flight than the ones from and to Barcelona. Until I read about
the sleeping train. A luxury train where you can have your own room,
and dinner and breakfast included in price. The only drawback of this
option is you cannot book or purchase tickets by Internet. You must
purchase the tickets in Cairo train station, with the potential problem
of a "no vacancy" answer once there. I always could use the flight as
an expensive plan B.
I got two options for Egypt entrance
from Aqaba: ferry from Aqaba to Nuweiba or by land, crossing two
borders in a row: Jordan-Israel and Israel-Egypt. Although it could
seem the opposite, the shortest option is the last one, but which
option
is the quickest and/or cheapest?. I don't know ans probably I won't
know after the travel either. I've read a lot about it and it is not
clear: the expenses are similar on both and depends a lot on the taxi
rates you get to make a difference; about the time, it seems the hours
taken by the ferry is a lottery where one uses to lose. Once got all
the
information, what I can say is, crossing by land is the most liable
option. So, we chose this option because we have the idea of resting on
a resort in Taba, the city in the border, too. We must to solve
egiptian visas in our own country, though.
There are
several options for going to Cairo across Siani peninsula, which is
good: by taxi, by rented car, by bus and by plane. The chance of hiring
a car is the most confortable for us and would be the chosen one if
could find a way of doing it by Internet, but I can only rent in Sharm
El Seikh on the companies with a website, and that city is on the other
side of the Sinai. I've read about hiring companies in Taba but it
seems I only will know rates and details once there. As second option,
unless we can find a good rated taxi trip - which seems quite
impossible in sinai - we have 8 hours bus.
We only
missed to choose the border crossing from Israel to Jordan. The
shortest to Jerusalem and Amman is Allenby Bridge with the only
drawback of having to bring Jordan visa from our own country, which is
more expensive. This was the chosen one until I found out something,
once the itinerary was closed, which went against our plans for the
first days.
The itinerary was closed like this, or at least
that was what I thought:
- Arriving to Tel Aviv and 3 nights in Jerusalem.
- Crossing to Jordan, picking rented car up, visiting Jerash y night in
Amman
- Visiting Amman, Madaba and Mount Nebo, night at Dead Sea
- Going to Petra and 2 nights there
- Visiting Wadi Rum and night in Aqaba
- Cross to Egypt and one night in Taba: beach in Dead Sea in All
Inclusive
- Trip through Sinai to Cairo and two nights there
- One more day in Cairo, but night in sleeping train to Aswan
- Visiting Abu Simbel and Aswan
- Nile Cruise for three days
- Visiting Luxor and flight to Gatwick, in London, night at hotel in
airport and flight back to Barcelona next morning.
But still changes came up to this plan. We liked a lot Taba
hotel
and it was thought for a rest before starting to visit Egypt as the
second half of the travel. Somehow, if we wanted to be a useful rest
we should spend two nights there because one night was a transit night
(arriving at evening to leave early next morning), so no relax and no
taking advantage of All Inclusive status. Where could we taking that
night from? I took it from Amman. If we will visit Jerash after border
crossing we can end that journey in Dead Sea. We will be able of
passing through Amman, which is a dispensable visit.
Luxor-Gatwick flight rate started to rise. I
thought I
could take advantage of Egypt revolution which made tourism in that
country to be much lower. That could make the travel cheaper (I'm not
crazy, I just was sure that situation would be gone for long in 9
months). But prices kept rising until, at flight purchase time,
Easyjet return flight was not an advantage anymore for my dates.
I was between different options which I'll explain
on
flights part below. Finally I chose the chance of taking my parents to
another wonder we've already know with a stopover in Athens. This was
not the cheaper option, counting we needed two hotel nights in order of
being able of visiting Acropolis. This was not the most handy option
either as I was forced to take another night from our itinerary. This
time I took the one in Aqaba because if we have already got
egyptian visas we will be able of arriving to Taba hotel the same day
we visit Wadi Rum. I was forced to split Cairo visits as well because
we should flight from Cairo instead of Luxor, so we are going to be in
Egypt capital a second time at the end of the travel. As Athens flight
is at afternoon, we've got a whole morning to spend in the city. The
idea was to use sleeping train again for Luxor-Cairo trip, but a trick
I found out for Egyptair flights let me book it by plane.
At last, the
general route plan (day number and where we spend
the night), definitively closed, is like this, starting by October 6th
of 2011:
1, 2 y 3: Jerusalem
4: Madaba
5 y 6: Wadi Musa
7 y 8: Taba
9: Cairo
10:
train
to
Aswan
11:
Aswan
12,
13 y
14: Nile Cruise
15: Cairo
16 y
17:
Athens
18: Barcelona
In map at right, car trips are showed in blue (rented car,
taxi,
sherut, bus, ...), flights are showed in red, boat trip in green and
Cairo-Aswan train in violet.
Finally, after failing some points from initial plan, as
Athens
stopover, we've changed the initial 1500€ budget to 1800€ now.
Somehow, I must explain, for other people can use the
information
I learnt for their own benefit, three basic changes on this plan can
make this travel, visiting the same spots in Jerusalem, Jordan and
Egypt, and almost using same hotels, with a budget of 1000€ per
couple!, which is an amazing price which I couldn't use.
The three changes are:
- With enough time in advance, taking the Easyjet flight from
Luxor, spending one night in a hotel in Gatwick airport. This flight
can be easily (and "easily" means several months earlier) found for 80€
in high season, but could be less, and even less for low
season.
The reduction by this point is clear: 400€ for return flights + 112€
for
two nights in Athens hotel + 66€ local flight
Luxor-Cairo=578€; versus 160€ Luxor-Gatwick Easyjet flight + 50€ good
hotel in Gatwick + 50€ Gatwick-Barcelona flights= 260€. ¡Saving more
than
300€!
- With enough time in advance, or for non-special
dates, booking room in hotel Maison d'Abraham in Jerusalem:
18$ ppn = 75€; versus 258€ for the guesthouse we've found with vacancy
for our dates. ¡Saving almost 200€!
- Far from a Nile cruise whim, you can visit the temples
between
Aswan and Kom Ombo by road in one single day and spending two more
nights in Luxor. On this city allocations are cheap and you can find
good hotels for 30€ per room. In an email from the hotel we've booked
at Aswan I can read this trip to Luxor by private car for less than 10€
per person. Then, you should change our 460€ cruise by 30+30+20=80€.
¡Saving almost 400€!
As always, this budget is about allocation and
transports only.
- Flights
The departure one way flight was chosen quickly. I
looked
for a Barcelona to Amman flight, but as Royal Air Jordan would be a
good option for a return flight (two hundred and a big something
euros), for a single way it was more than 200€. Vueling offered a
better price for one way flight, but we needed something below
considering we marked 500€ as budget for flights, therefore, per
person, they couldn't be beyond 250€. Due to the idea of visiting
Jerusalem on route, I checked rates for flights to Israel and then I
found the incredible Spanair prices, which were set to 40€ for all
October flights to Tel Aviv, although the final price was 100€ for
those tickets, after including taxes and extras. This price left us
with 150€ for the returning flight. The only "but" of that flight was
the time as it flies Saturday nights, landing around 1 AM. Somehow, at
the time of purchasing the tickets on Spanair website at the middle of
March, I was shocked by the fact that when I tried to take 4 tickets
the price was twice their value. After some test I found out buying 2
or 3 tickets they kept their price, but if I selected 4 then the price
for all of them was set to 200€. One possible solution was to buy 3
100€ tickets and one 200€ one, but finally I chose to change the date:
next Thursday, which kept the 100€ price for all four tickets. Also, I
got the benefit of an earlier flight, even it landed at night, at
least, it was not at small hours and, additionally, one of the three
days we would spend in Jerusalem was going to be a Saturday, so we
could live a Sabbath there.
Somehow, this change was going to provoke a problem later.
Two
months later I found out that sabbath wasn't an ordinary one but the
one called "Saturday of Saturdays". It is the bigger holyday in the
country: Yom Kippur. On that day, no vehicles are running on any road
or street of the whole country, the borders and airports are closed and
they even close radios and tv channels. The country is closed. The
problem is going without knowing what we will be able to visit that
day. Christian temples seem to be opened, though.
Returning flights seemed quite clear since the beginning.
Actually, we're closing the route in Luxor because Easyjet has flights
to Gatwick for 80€. Somehow, those prices started to rise and at the
moment of purchasing them, they were beyond 120€. That made me look for
another plan here. The travel was thought for leaving to Israel on
Saturday and taking this return flight on Monday. Actually, Easyjet
only has two Luxor-Gatwick flights per week: Mondays and Wednesdays.The
October 24th flight cost 189€ at the beginning of July. Somehow, if
the travel would be set for a couple of weeks before, 4 months in
advance, the October 10th flight cost 60€.
Anyway,
taking the explained flight to Tel Aviv and discarded Easyjet as
returning option, the travel changed from being Saturday to Tuesday to
be Thursday to Sunday. Looking flights for those return dates I ended
calling to Spanair because their round flight Barcelona-Cairo rate was
299€, as a one way flight Cairo-Barcelona was on 239€. This is typical
for common airlines and is a way of forcing you to take both round
trips to them, but another typical behavior is to offer a special
price on multiple destinations, which is, if you take both round trips
to the same airline but arriving to and leaving from different cities,
they use to do an average price. This would be a solution here but the
multiple destinations option didn't exist in Spanair web site. Then I
called to them and surprisingly the price difference was tiny. Not
only they don't do any average but they keep almost the same price as
if you take two one way flights: 329€. Only 10€ of discount!
I kept looking, including flights with one
scale
anywhere in Europe this time, until I found the Athens option. It was out of
budget, but it would make my parents happy if we included an Acropolis
visit on this travel. Olimpic airlines offered a Cairo-Athens flight
for
the needed Friday by 85€ and Aegean airlines has an Athens-Barcelona
flight for that Sunday by 100€. At the middle of March I booked and
paid four tickets for all three routes.
The only
surprise at the moment of purchasing them was with Olimpic flight to
Athens, the charging process to the credit card was taking longer than
usual until it was suspended with an error message saying flight rate
had changed. When I retried, I had to pay almost 100€ each ticket. So
finally, from 500€ of budget we spent 600€ for flight per couple.
Finally, then, the flights were like this:
06/10/2011 BCN 18:25 TLV
22:30
21/10/2011 CAI 14:10 ATH
17:10
23/10/2011 ATH 08:45 BCN
11:00
Later I found out if you enter on Egyptair web
site as
Egypt as local country rates are totally different for internal
flights. In order of taking advantage of this discovery I purchased 4
tickets to fly from Luxor to Cairo the day the cruise ends. The cheaper
flight was the on leaving later, but as our idea already was spending
the whole day visiting Luxor, we took the flight at 00:20:
21/10/2011 LUX 00:20 CAI 01:30
The rate of this flight was 1066 EGP, so 125€ at
current exchange for all four people.
- Hotels
I’ve looked into a lot of
different web sites before choosing hotels. My searches started in Booking.com
mainly, and then I looked alternative hotels on their own web sites.
I looked for hotels
following
those parameters:
- 3 nights for one in
Jerusalem, as closer as possible to the Old City.
- 1 night on a Dead Sea resort with parking
- 2 nights for one in Wadi Musa, closet o Petra, with parking
- 2 nights on a Red Sea resort, in Egypt
- 2 separate nights for one in Cairo, as closer as possible to
archeological
museum
- 1 night for one hotel in Aswan
- 2 night for one hotel in Athens, close to downtown or Acropolis.
Some of them came with my
request as the hotel was the reason of spending the night there, as
happened
for Taba resort. For Hotel Sol y Mar Sea Star “All
inclusive” rates
were shown and they were attractive enough as per
spending two
nights there.
The hotel in Aswan was
chosen
based on different parameters than usual. It seems the level for the
hotels in
that zone is quite poor, but there is a group of cheap hotels which
trip rates
set them apart from the rest, specifically, their Abu Simbel trip
rates. What
seemed to be the best of this group for me is Hotel Keylany.
We
contacted by
email to them and they sent us their tour rates in a flash. Going to
Abu Simbel
for less than 10€ is reason enough for me for choosing it. Besides,
those
hotels refuse customers out of the hotel for these trips. Hotel
Keylany has no website for their own and you are asked to book through
hotels
websites as hostelworld.com or booking.com. We’re talking about 25€ per
room. We shouldn’t expect so much of this hotel by this price, but it
seems
the people reviewed it after being there ended quite happy. Anyway,
we’re going
to use it just for sleep, and so few, as that night we must be up at 3
in the
morning.
Another hotel easy to
choose was
Petra one. When you’re looking for allocation offers around that place,
immediately there is one which its value for money sets it apart from
the rest:
Cleopetra. I booked quickly two rooms for two nights in there. I paid
35€ per
night per room.
Hotel supply in Athens is huge. Around
archeological museum I found three
hotels with the value for money I use to looking for: Areos, Centrotel
and Art
Athens. Somehow, at the moment of booking and purchasing the rooms
there were a
lot of demonstrations on that zone of the city protesting about
government economic
measures with usual riots, so I decided to move to a different zone,
closer to
Acropolis. I finally chose the Chic Hotel, rated even better than the
mentioned
before. It
is 56€ per room, including breakfast, which the others
didn’t.
And now were facing the difficult ones.
Seven
months in advance I was so confident about hotel availability for the
chosen
ones. First I wanted to close was the one in Jerusalem, a truly
bargain. Nice
hotel, close to Old City by 18$ per night, which could be 25$ with half
board:
http://www.maison-abraham.com/Tarifs.htm. It
was the key for being in our budget because it was going to be the
place where
we’re going to spend more nights and in a city full of expensive hotels
as
Jerusalem is. The hotels in usual booking websites aren’t lower than
100€ per
night and, if you find one which are, reviews from people whom have
been there
make a picture of a place we don’t want to be in. Somehow, the answer
to my
email was a “no vacancy” message. I didn’t want to accept it and I
called them.
Obviously they confirmed the no availability of rooms with bathroom but
they
have vacancy for what they call “bungalows”, which are small rooms with
no
toilet. I thought about it, but just one minute: I couldn’t take my
parents
three days in a place where they should go across a garden for using
the
toilet. I looked for alternatives and found Ecce Homo convent offered
rooms
within Old City. Rates
were higher, but good enough. Only I received
a “no vacancy” email back again. And then I panicked. Ecce
Homo email answer sent me a link to a local website with allocation
chances: www.cicts.org ; so I started to send
a bunch of emails to every place, some of them had good rates, others
were
expensive. I received no availability answer from Notredame,
Christchurch
guesthouse, Maronite guesthouse among others. Only one answered with
availability,
the most expensive one, by the way: Lutheran Guesthouse. At least, it
was rated
number 1 on Tripadvisor. Bad news are 43€ ppn. 86€ per room and the
budget crashed.
I’m sure this is a best option then my first one, but I don’t think it
is going
to be more than three times better, as the rates are. Anyway, I booked
immediately, once panicked with the vacancy. I couldn’t understand
availability
problem until I found out about Yom Kippur weekend, which I think has
something
to do here…
Preferences for Dead Sea
were
clear to me based specifically on price. Holiday Inn showed 80€ as rate
a
couple of months previous plane tickets purchase, while starting my
budget calculation.
But it rose constantly since then until, at the moment of booking, it
reached
Movenpick rates: 140€. Plan B was Dead Sea Spa, the only 4 stars hotel
there
and, therefore, cheaper. But it rose too much too, until 120€ at the
moment of
booking. We’re meaning more than six months in advance yet. If you want
to make
a similar travel you must know there are some places should be taken
almost one
year in advance. At that moment, I was on an internal fight: I could
spend a quarter
of the hotels budget in one single night because I considered we should
enjoy
Dead Sea in good conditions or looking for cheaper alternatives far
from Dead
Sea. Considering what happened with the budget for Jerusalem hotel, I
started to
look for our chances somewhere else. Best hotels in Madaba, which is
close to
Dead Sea considering we’re going to have a car, were just as much as
40€. This
could be a good option for us if I could only find a good place to
enjoy Dead
Sea next day. I could read Dead Sea resorts have the option of
purchasing a
ticket for enjoying their facilities for people out of the hotel, the
fee was
higher than the room in Madaba hotel, but sum of both numbers was still
cheaper
than spending the night in resort. I thought that was the best solution
until I
found “O Beach”. If I wanted to enjoy this new place and meet the
concept of “luxury
beach” I should be allocated somewhere else, what a coincidence!, just
what I
was thinking about. So I finally modified initial plan for spending
night at
Hotel Rumman in Madaba by 30€.
And we’re almost reaching the end with
Cairo
nights. Is not difficult finding hotel in this city as the amount of
allocations
there is immense, as much as the price range. But plan has changed a
lot of
times for this point. At the beginning, it was clear for me the hotel
should be
the same for both separate nights, as this way we could leave part of
the baggage
in it for being lighter for the last part of the travel until we come
back to
the hotel the second time. Somehow, Gizeh is far from Cairo downtown
and has
some parameters we should value for our needs here: pyramids are there,
Gizeh
train station is the best option to board into sleeping train, you can
buy or
pick up the tickets on that station and hotels are better and cheaper
than the
ones in Cairo. All these points are great advantages for our first
night, but
disadvantages for the second night. The solution was taking a good
resort with
pool for our first stay, the one we should take the train, and I looked
for a cheaper
hotel in Cairo for our second stay, a week later. I selected Hotel
Oasis in
Gizeh, very close to pyramids, by
66€. We’ll stay in the lap of luxury by a good price. Besides, this
hotel has a
complimentary transport service to Cairo downtown every two hours which
we
could use the afternoon planned to visit Khan El Khalili market.
For the second stay we‘ve chosen a cheap
hotel with a lot of benefits for our purpose: Hotel Isis is one block
away
Cairo archaeological Museum and will pick us up from the airport free
of
charge.
Hotel expenses are as following, quite
out
of our 500€ budget, as you can see:
-Lutheran Ghesthouse: 258€
-Hotel Rumman: 30€
-Hotel Cleopetra: 70€
-Al Wekala Three Corners: 120€
-Hotel Oasis: 66€
-Hotel Keylany: 25€
-Hotel Isis: 30€
-Chic Hotel Atenas: 112€
Total: 711€
-
Car rental
In our plan, hiring a car in Jordan is
essential. It would be for four days and I didn’t expect a big expense
here.
For renting cars in this country you should look carefully insurances
and
picking and delivery points. This last point is important as, although
the most
of the companies let picking and delivery cars in almost every spot in
the
county, the cost could be big, even bigger than the car rental itself.
Just a few options were under 200€ for 4
days and pick and delivery points we needed. The option we trusted the
most was
Montecar: http://www.montecar.com/Fleet.htm. A price in dollars is an advantage
with the current currency. But, as well as the rates are quite
eye-catching,
the important part is at the bottom of the page: 50$ picking the car up
in
Jordan border and 75$ delivering it in Arava border, close to Aqaba. We
should
think about the baggage too: we’re going to be four persons with 3 or 4
bags,
so we can now forget about economy category. The best option for us I
think is
the cheaper on Full-size list: 45$. This makes a total of (45x4) + 75 +
50 =
305$, just over 200€, and must still add 15$ per day for avoiding
excess and/or
GPS. Well, I found a way of hiring exactly the same by 260$. If we go
through
this web site www.jordancarrental.com
rates are less for
all
options
and they’re not hiding you’re hiring to Montecar.
Apart from Jordan, there is an option of
renting car in Sinai for making trip to Cairo more comfortable, but
alternative
plans are good enough as per don’t be worried about this point and
taking this
option just in the case rates are acceptable for us.
-Other
expenses
This Travel is full of
“other expenses” in taxis, sheruts, buses and tours,
as Wadi Rum and Abu Simbel trips and the ones we will do by our own in
Aswan or
to the pyramids. The main expenses, though, and the ones we’re going to
include
in the budget, are the Nile cruise and sleeping train from Cairo to
Aswan. Both
have the common point of being transport and allocation in one time. We
can
mention O Beach too, but this expense is easy to explain: http://www.obeach.net/jordan/about.php.
I found a couple of local
agencies websites which let me see prices and
information about different boats for Nile cruises. The rest of the web
sites
forced me to fill a form up with my whole data for sending me a quote
and I had
the feeling that was going to get me into a bargaining email process.
The web
sites I used were Nile-Cruise-Egypt.com y vantage-travels.com. After
checking
the whole list of boats I could see the most of the cruises started
their 3 nights
trip from Aswan to Luxor on Friday, then there was a smaller group
starting on
Wednesday, and just a few of them had their start for the rest of the
week
days. We needed one of this last group as our plan was sailing from
Aswan on
Monday and I could see an advantage on avoiding crowded temples by
people
coming from a lot of boats at the same time. I only found two boats
starting on
Monday: Iberotel Crown Empress and Iberotel MS Crown Emperor. The
difference
between those ships are “Empress” is bigger, actually, it is the
biggest boat
in Nile, and that’s the reason I’ve chosen it. I think it could be an
advantage
in case we want a room change: biggest ship, biggest room availability
options.
This could be useful because the most of complaints about Nile cruise
boats
comes from rooms close to engines which constant noise disturbed people
and
didn’t let them to sleep.
Vantage travels web site showed a
97$ rate ppn. A message stated this price was valid only until
September 30th,
but I couldn’t expect a big difference for three weeks later.
Nile-Cruise_Egypt
web site showed a 145$ rate ppn for October. This rate was attractive
too if
noticing a red banner announced 30% discount if booked 6 months in
advance (3
monbths in advance discount was set to 15%). The prices then, were
close to the
expected ones: less than 500€ per couple for both options.
I requested a quote from both
agencies. First I received Nile Cruise Egypt offer, which was exactly
the
expected price: 305$ per person, including the discount, meals and
visits and,
surprisingly, the chance of having a Spanish guide for all three days.
Then I
received offer from Vantage and I got another surprise there: they
changed
rates currency from dollars to euros and rates were 100€ ppn. So the
same
package was 300€ with one only difference: they included visit to Luxor
and
Karnak temples, but the guide should be English. Considering we can
easily visit
those temples by our own, I decided to send an answer explaining clear
I
noticed their “subtle” currency change. I stated if rates were 97$
until
September 30th I didn’t expect a 50% (145$) rise
in rates for two
week later. I explained we’ve already got a 100$ ppn quote, so I
refused their offer.
I expected to be clear about knowing difference between euro and dollar
and,
may be, a lower offer from them. But I only received an email
confirming rates
and requesting me to double check offer from other companies as they
were sure
their extras weren’t included.
I paid almost 900€ for a Nile cruise for
four persons by credit card, although they needed from me to send an
authorization
with a signed form and even scanned images of the card. This subject
was closed
then. Finally I got something below budget! I needed to have cruise
tied in
advance but I’m so curious about what are the chances if you hire
cruise once
in Aswan.
Sleeping
train is quite tricky. They
set some restrictions seem to be against any will of selling tickets:
- Foreigners, whom this
train is thought for, cannot book
tickets on line.
- They don’t accept to book before two weeks of
trip date.
- They don’t answer to emails.
- It’s an act of faith and you must be incredible
lucky, booking
by FAX or phone.
- Once booked, you must pick up the tickets no
later than 24 hours
in advance.
- You cannot pay there with local money. They
accept dollars and
euros, but if you use euros I’ve read about travellers whom they tried
to set
parity: 1 euro = 1 dollar. They try to scam you with currency exchange
anyway.
- You must pay the exact amount as they will try
to keep any
change.
One way of getting over all these
obstacles set by the company in order you could use their services
–that’s
crazy!- is purchasing the tickets through a local agency. So paying a
bit more
you can assure your tickets. Another option is asking to your hotel if
they
offer this service. Also you could try to get your booking with a lot
of
patience and be constant about calling and faxing and then, being at
the
station the day before departure, and before the office closing time to
buying
them avoiding being scammed in the process. But, in our case, is not
clear we
can go for them the previous day. It depends on the time we arrive from
Sinai.
You can throw the dice and go for the tickets once in Cairo with no
booking and
trusting on the alternatives, as plane or local sleeping train, in case
you
fail.
There is still a lot to know on this
“Other
expenses” part which will be explained on each day story.
Detailed plan, then, is like this:
|
|
OCTOBER |
|
Day |
Night |
Morning |
Afternoon |
6 |
Jerusalem |
Working
on
baggage |
Tel
Aviv flight and arriving to Jerusalem |
7 |
Jerusalem |
Mount
of
Olives |
Old
City |
8 |
Jerusalem |
Mount
of Zion |
Old
City |
9 |
Madaba |
Arriving
to
Jordan and Jerash |
Amman |
10 |
Wadi
Musa |
Dead
Sea |
Karak |
11 |
Wadi
Musa |
Petra |
Petra |
12 |
Taba |
Wadi
Rum |
Aqaba
y
larriving to Egypt through Taba |
13 |
Taba |
Red
Sea |
Sinai |
14 |
Cairo |
Trip
to
Cairo across Sinai |
Khan
El
Khalili market |
15 |
Train |
Gizeh,
Dusher and Saqqara |
Gizeh |
16 |
Aswan |
Aswan |
Aswan |
17 |
Cruise |
Abu
Simbel |
Aswan |
18 |
Cruise |
Kom
Ombo |
Edfu |
19 |
Cruise |
Luxor |
Luxor |
20 |
Cairo |
Luxor
and
Karnak temples |
Luxor
and
flight to Cairo |
21 |
Athens |
Cairo |
Athens |
22 |
Athens |
Athens |
Athens |
|