In Cairo, the museum was pretty bustling, and was the one stop of the trip where tourists were obvious. Lots of folks in western casual dress, such as women wearing short shorts/skirts. My hotels were a mix of Egyptians or folks from the Middle East on vacation. By contrast, Luxor was really deserted, with me having a couple of the temples mostly to myself. Most of the other tourists appeared to be European or Asian. Valley of the Kings had a fair number of visitors though. My guide in Luxor said that I was his first work in a couple of weeks, and he implied that everybody in the industry is hurting. Seemed like there was a huge oversupply of taxis, horse carriages, felucca boat rides, basically everything.

For example, these are boats that used to run overnight cruises up and down the Nile. My guide said that back in 2010, there were a couple hundred operating and were usually fully booked. He said now, there might be only a couple dozen...



The Egyptian rate for the sleeper train is 600 LE for a single or 300 for a double, so $80 or $40. If you really wanted to save money the regular 1st class trains would have been $20. But that's just a seat and I wanted at least a chance of some sleep.

Hopefully I'll get the Luxor portion up tonight or tomorrow.