Sunrise Select MS Semiramis II

The rooms were clean enough but once again there was a mustiness about them. The staff were friendly and polite spoke basic English and whilst a few would joke around slightly, no one overstepped the mark. The chap who cleaned the rooms (women don't work on the ships) had what I could only describe as a towel fetish. On returning to our room we would be met with a towel rolled up as a monkey or an alligator, or a dog..I tipped him but told him to share it with the monkey.

The food was adequate although at one stage people were going down like nine pins with some kind of bug which the Thompson rep insisted was something which someone had imported from England. Lets see now, we leave nice clean hygenic England and go to the running sewer which is Egypt and bring with us some dreadful form of dysentry...make your own mind up on that one.

I would like to write something clever, witty and cutting about the service on board but frankly it was all excellent.

Very little of anything and achingly bad.

There were plenty of excursions and our guide certainly new his stuff, although he did have an unfortunate delivery which made him drone rather. I was all Templed out after the 2nd day. Temples of one kind of another are as plentiful as McDonalds in any big city. The thing is that to get to them you have to go ashore and are at the mercy of the street hawkers. These are so persistant and pushy that fellow guests agreed that they would not return to Egypt because of them. On the whole cities like Luxor and Aswan are pretty dire. The Egyptian people living in them seem not to care about or for their sorroundings.

Tips are collected at the end of the trip, you are given a couple of envelopes and they suggest about sixty pounds per cabin...There are eighty five people working on the ship so I guess it would be impossible to do individual tipping.