Hi all,

I am hoping to get some opinions...I am considering taking the Best of Egypt (departing Dec 9), the price is good, but I was surprised that regular Egypt tours were also running. I know there's some give and take with the Winter tours, but why would YOU take the a none Winter tour over the Winter tour. In fact the Winter Brochure stats Best of Egypt $100.00 more expensive than the regular Best of Egypt. I thought the Winter Tours were suppose to be cheaper??

I would appreciate any feedback.

Lisa

Yes, that makes sense, but the regular tour doesn't start until April and I wanted to go during the winter season.

Thanks
Lisa

Hi Cats,

I'm just more confused as to the different tours - I've been doing my research on-line whereas it might be easier to just get some brochures because boy, there are serveral Egypt tours to choose from!

Your right about Egypt not being anything like Canada! I did Treasures of SP&M in April and just fell in love with Morocco so I expecting Egypt to have that type of affect on me as well.

Thanks for replying,
Lisa

Ah! Morocco! It was great wasn't it Lisa?

Hi Cats

I guess it depends on just who you get saddled with when you get there. Our TD was saying before we arrived that there are some good ones and some that you have to be very careful with. He was very releived when he found out who we had for our tour and I must say our National Guide was great, a lot of fun as well as being very helful.

For our Moroccan tour our local guide for the whole time was Abdol, who was an excellent guide. In Fes we had Mobie who was also good value, but in Marrakech we had a very bad guide, even our beloved leader was heard to say that he was a dead loss; on several occasions Abdul stepped in and took over. Abdul might be a bad advertisement for Islam (he drinks like a fish), but he is a great guide. On returning to the hotel the lack of tipping was very evident.

That seems to be the luck of the draw and on balance we were lucky.

The worst local guide we have encountered was in Rome. We had a very early start to visit the Vatican museums and Saint Peters, so we were queued up at 7:00 well before the doors opened, the second group in line. It was hot standing in the sun. Our local guide went off to get the tickets, but the doors opened and groups were filing past us and there was no sign of the guide. A search party was sent out and found him having breakfast!

We left the museums and the Sistine chapel and re-entered Italy to take a short cut to St. Peters. En-route and somewhere in Italy, our guide managed to lose five of the group.

We motored back into Italy and stopped off at the Coliseum. Our guide remarked, “It is not worth going in” and instead led us down to a piece of waste ground and announced that it was the Forum. For some reason we were not impressed! For some extraordinary reason the tips were virtually non-existent.

Somehow our TD, Monica, discovered that we were not happy, so she produced another guide who took us walkabout in the evening. He was excellent and refused any tips.

Hello Dragon! Good to hear from you

Hi Cats & Tangata

Our Moroccan Guide was great, funny though that I haven't read about any other travellers getting him...his name was Absolum. Our TD, Steven Thacker would call him "Kenny" because he looked like Kenny Rogers

Egypt has been a dream of mine for a long time, but I have to tell you....I'm a little....just a little nervous, and my husband is very uncomfortable about me going. We have a travel advisory for Egypt as I'm sure everyone does, but I would appreciate some feedback regarding how safe/unsafe you felt during your trip. I don't want fear to run me, but I also don't want to be foolish.

I'm going to call my Travel Agent today to see how quickly I could get the visa. I have been looking at Trafalar's brochure as well (did the European Break with them in Feb), but after doing both Insight & Trafalgar, I would prefer to stick with Insight. Not that I had any bad experience with Trafalgar, Insight just seemed on a different level which I liked.

Lisa

Hi Lisa - we were in Egypt in April last year and never felt worried about our safety at any stage. There have of course been some occurences since then - but I would go back tomorrow if there weren't so many other places in the world I want to see too! We also visited Turkey after Egypt and at the time the Australian government was advising against travel to Turkey, but we had no problems there either.

Tourism is so highly valued in these countries that the general population want to see more visitors come and spend their tourism dollars to help their economies - it is generally the minority who scare people off in many cases around the world.

There are still many people who travel to Egypt by themselves (ie without a tour) so if they can do it, surely a tour is going to offer you more protection by pointing you in the right direction. Much less chance of you wandering into the wrong place and offending some custom etc.

You can get a visa on arrival at the airport if you want to make your mind up at the last minute - plenty of people do it that way and we were asked when met at the airport by Spring Tours (Insight's representative in Egypt) if we need to get one.

Go and enjoy yourself - you won't regret it!!

Di

Hi Lisa

We were in Egypt in April of this year and here is a link to my trip report.

Wonders of Egypt

Go for Egypt Lisa.

I know you enjoyed Morocco and I am confident you will equally enjoy Egypt.