Private Tour:12 Days 11 Nights Pyramids/Nile Cruise & Hurghada by Air from Cairo

Review of Egypt tour with Reflections There are many components to the 12 day, 11 nights, Pyramid/Nile cruise and Hurghada by air to Cairo package. Some parts we would rate much higher than 5 stars and some less. But all in all it averaged out to 5 stars! We had an amazing time! We will give a breakdown of what was good and not so good. 1st Company was fast to reply to any questions and emails. 2nd We were worried that with so many stops and exchanges something would go wrong, but it all worked like clockwork !! We were met at Cairo airport by Sayed our first guide. He was warm, friendly, knowledgeable, English speaking was good, but not excellent. He informed us of our schedule and accompanied us to the hotel and got us checked in. We stayed at the Barcelo in Giza. It was a very nice elegant but somewhat dated hotel. But we were very pleased with the accommodations. The tour of Giza pyramids area and two other pyramid sites was VERY well planned and WONDERFUL ! We could not have asked for better. Next morning we were brought to the airport to fly to Aswan. Again all went perfectly ! We arrived at Aswan airport and we were met by Mohsen (Mossy) our second guide for the next four days. Mossy was AWESOME he was friendly, spoke excellent English and is a professor in Egyptology. He held my wife's hand everywhere we went to make us feel safe and secure. He taught us so much and could not have treated us better if we were his own family. He protected us from aggressive vendors and unfair prices. He went with us on the boat trip on the Nile and gave us a private tour at each stop !! If we could give him 10 stars we would. If you are able to request a guide for any part of your trip we HIGHLY recommend him! The Nile cruise boat was beautiful and quite comfortable. We were VERY happy with it. Only failing is it had no elevator. But it seems non of the Nile cruise boats do. All the crew were at your ready, the food was great! The trip on the Nile magical! All the archaeological sites were MIND BLOWING from Philae island to valley of the kings Pharaoh tombs, to Abu Simbel, Luxor, Karnak and MORE! What an adventure! Now for the only disappointing part. Four hour drive mostly through the desert to Hurghada on the Red Sea. We would not have minded the long drive if we really enjoyed it when we got there. The hotel is lovely to look extremely clean and the view beautiful and refreshing to see blue water after the long desert drive but that is where it ends. The maintenance in this hotel was terrible. So many things did function properly. Elevator buttons stuck we tried another elevator and same same problem with it. The shower door was off the track, sink broken, air conditioning kept shutting off and giving error message. The simple amenities that are expected like shampoo, tissues, extra roll of toilet paper were all absent. They gave coffee but no coffee cups we had to chase down coffee cups and toilet paper. Very annoying ! Any complaints fell on deaf ears. Now for the beach. It was shallow ,only thigh high for at least 60 feet out. It was rocky and full of jelly fish. We got in and out very quick. If you wanted to stay on the beach it was lovely and grounds beautiful. The high point of our stay there was the Desk clerk Ahmed ! Very sweet guy! He did his best but could not get anyone to do anything for us. Plane trip from Hurghada back to Cairo again was flawless ! If you could skip Hurghada or perhaps stay at a different hotel than Magic beach we would suggest that.

We travelled by 4 with Reflections travel, an agency based in Luxor. The itinerary is incredbibe and Egypt is an amazing destination with lot to offer to its visitors: so we did love Egypt, but unfortunately we didn't like our experience with this tour. We were never informed in advance about our accomodations in different places: so there had been no chance to check the hotels, which supposedly were all 5 stars... We were supposed to spend the first 3 nights in Cairo, but it turned out there would be only 2 nights at the beginning and 2 at the end of our tour: we found out about this once there. The morning we were flying to Aswan our pick up transfer from the hotel was scheduled at 4am for a flight at 6am, but the driver only showed up (after several calls from the concierge) at 4.45, driving fast as crazy to the airport, which didn't make us feel safe and comfortable. The 5 star cruise ship and the 5 star hotels were maybe 5 stars in the 80's, but absolutely not anymore nowadays: especially the hotel in Hurgada was dirty. old, rundown, far from the city with awful food: we didnt enjoy our time there at all. The locations of the 2 hotels in Cairo were both far from the city (in the proximity of the airport), with nowhere around to go or nothing to do, unless you wanted to spend long hours in hectic Cairo traffic. The tour guides were always complaining about the travel agency and how they had to pay for tickets and evrything lese in advance, which contriubted to crete a weird and ackward atmoshpere. Overall, I will not suggest a tour with Reflections travel to anyone ,unfortunately.

We just finished our first three days of this trip in Cairo. We had a great time. Working with Reflection travel was wonderful. The arrangements made equaled or exceeded our expectations. Our guide Esam our guide in Cairo and our driver Ahmed were great. Learnt a lot, they were accommodating and made our travel informative , safe and pleasant.