An interesting itinerary, combining cruising with some hotel stays. We flew to Cairo and due to a delayed flight spent a short night in the Fairmont Nile Hotel before beginning our tour of the Museum, Pyramids and Sphinx. Our guide for these visits and the following day was excellent but unfortunately this was the highlight and the subsequent guides varied from average to poor. This hotel was good apart from the dining arrangements for dinner which took place on an open veranda with a strong wind blowing. Not a place to linger over one's meal. The following day we flew to Luxor and a further overnight stay visiting the Temples and Valley of the Kings before travelling to Safaga to embark. A further overnight was spent in Palmyra whilst visiting the large site.

At many of the ports we were late leaving for our tours, clearance seemed to take longer than planned and as a result we arrived at St Catherine's Monastery just 30 minutes before it was due to close. We had tendered at Sharm El Sheikh which added to the time to get ashore, although a similar sized ship was berthed alongside the quay and there appeared room for our own ship.

Organization for the tours was not good, our cabin level (concierge class)gave us priority for disembarkation but in reality this didn't happen all the time. Read more