- Route plan

- Flights

- 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.

   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:

- 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 30^th, 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 30^th 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.

   - 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.

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