El Fostate Cruise Ship

We were on the cruise for one week from 4th June 2008. Where sailing was supposed to take place during the day this did not happen, sailing was during the night, the noise and vibration from the engines kept us awake. Why bother to cruise during the night you could not see anything.

Trying to cram in too many trips on one day, morning and afternoon.

We have been on a Nile cruise before and found it really relaxing, we found this one a complete disaster.

We had to constantly find someone to serve drinks on deck.

One day we did not go out to one of the temples and decided to stay onboard and use the plunge pool, when we went upstairs they had emptied the pool for cleaning (surely this should be done prior to people arriving for their cruise), however this also put me off as you could see the condition of the pool was with cracked tiles and badly eroded handrails. Allegedly this ship was supposed to have just been refurbished, cabin decor where the wardrobes etc were painted white all the brass fittings etc had been partly painted over.

I could go on and on..

Cruise on the El Fostate was absolutely first class but I would recommend going all inclusive as we ended up with a £300 sterling bar bill, but thats for a week so I suppose not too bad.

The whole ship is spotlessly clean, The cabins have everything in them and are cleaned at least twice a day, the staff cannot do enough for you.

We did have a small incident with one of the German tour guides but it soon blew over, we only had twenty English on the ship and the rest were nearly all German.

Prices on the ship seem expensive Stella at 33 LE a bottle I was offered a Galabayer at the shop on the ship for £25 GB and bought one in Aswan town for around £7 GB.

If I was asked to name one thing about the cruise that could have been better, I just couldn't think of anything, everything was just superb

Excursion Program.

Although we must have had one of the best guides around and we only had twenty in our group we did find that by the end of the week we were just Templed out some of us did think that they do try to fit too much in and we did miss out some of the trips but they are optional so thats a choice you have to make. This may sound like I'm complaining but believe me I'm not, our guide was wonderful she was full of information, very knowledgeable and tried to fit as much in as possible.

At all the Temples, monuments you are really pestered by the local street traders, beggars etc, we learnt don't look at them just keep walking and saying no thank you and definitely do not accept anything they claim is a gift or present. This was one of the things that everyone complained about and believe me they really are a pest but thats life and they are not allowed past the gates of the monument/Temple.

Extra excursions

Everyone gets the option of some extra trips but beware some of these are very expensive, we got offered a hot air balloon ride at £70GB only to find the same trip on offer in The New Winter Palace Hotel for £30GB.

All in all a wonderful holiday.