Winter Palace Hotel, Luxor

Back blip

A bit behind with blips. Bb arrived safely in Cairo at the flat at 3.30am and we were both off to the airport again at 9.30am to fly to Luxor, just an hour's flight away. We're now here and in the Winter Palace Hotel, a grand old dame of a hotel, where it's not difficult to imagine how this must have been in Belle Époque era. Nowadays though, there's just a sprinkling of tourists. We didn't venture from the hotel today, settled into our Nile view room, unpacked, had a late lunch at a table overlooking the pool and then explored the garden, which is home to over 150 kinds of trees, all labelled meticulously. It's lovely to hear the birds and smell the flowers! Slightly dodgy wifi, so we're very pleased that we bought a month's worth of 3G in Cairo, which lets us use our iPads.

This is a view of the back of the hotel. The Nile's to the front.