Cosmos / Flash, Lady Mary Review

“Lady Mary - Nice boat, clean, generally friendly...”

Written on: 22/02/2009 by Travellers (1 review written)

Lady Mary - Nice boat, clean, generally friendly staff, great views of the Nile whilst cruising, fantastic tours to the temples.

Monarch tell you to check in at the airport 3 hrs before take off. This is rubbish. Even the check-in staff say its daft.


Make sure you reserve ahead of time a cabin as far forward as possible to avoid the noise of the engines and the disco/dance floor.

If you are going to a Red Sea resort, check the time it takes. We went to El Gouna and it took 6 hours by coach, without any hold-ups ! Hurgada is about 4 to 41/2 hours. An hour and a half was added to our trip just to drop 4 people off at a resort called Sahl Hashish. We all refused for this to happen on the return trip and insisted that Cosmos picked them up by taxi to meet us.


One group on our coach were booked into the Dana Hotel in Hurgada, only to be told on arrival that there were no rooms available. How can this be when all have pre-paid and pre-booked?

The cook on the carvery deals out portions of meat like he personally owns it and is trying to make one small joint of beef feed half of Egypt. No briefing as to what an abandon ship siren sounds like although they sound it off every now and again?



The Nile trip was very good indeed. The Egyptologist was excellent and had a good sense of humour. You must be prepared for some very early starts 5.30 " 06.00 to avoid the heat and crowds. Its worth it. The hot air balloon trip gets you a wake up at 5.45am to see the sun rise over the Valley of Kings. Cost about £70 per person and worth every penny of it. Same cost in UK would be about £150 over ordinary countryside.



Cosmos and Archers are the same company but several people said that if you book through Archers it ' s a lot cheaper? Cosmos are a bit of a shambles when it came to the trip from the boat to the Red Sea resorts. We asked our travel agent Thomas Cook in the UK and Cosmos several times how long it takes to get to our hotel, neither knew. We were never given the option to fly. Had we known it would take 6 hours we would have flown.