Nile Tours are Back: cruising at Luxor

Feluccas on the NIle

One of the things starting back this week are Nile cruises.  We didn't do the official Nile cruise which involves a couple of days floating on the Nile anywhere between Luxor and Cairo. The most common are the 4-7 day cruises between Aswan and Cairo on large cruisers.  Some are the height of luxury and some are more modest.

We did, however, cruise on the Nile on a small, old-fashioned Egyptian wooden sailing boat called

One course of our multi-course meal

felucca.  Our sail was a two hour lunch cruise catered by a local luxury hotel and the food was outstanding.  Elegantly served by a formally-dressed waiter, course after course of Egyptian food was brought to us at a low table in the center of the boat.  It was impossible to eat all the food, but we tried.

After lunch the next order of business was sight-seeing along the river- scenes from everyday life along the Nile.  My favorite sights were the camels- not decked-out the way they normally are at the Giza pyramids or other tourist sights, but camels just going about their daily business. It seemed odd to see

Camels going about their day

 camels just casually standing around, mixing with other animals.

It's great that travelers, once again, are going to be able to share in this part of life in Egypt.