Monday 26th September - journey to Luxor

The long awaited day had arrived.  The day we were to travel to my 'second home' - Luxor!!  (There were four of us, my husband and I and our friends)

Being in Scotland, it's a bit of a long journey but this time we had booked with Kuoni who had handled the internal flights as well as the scheduled Egyptair fight from Heathrow and, as a special treat, we had booked into the Servisair lounge for some rest and relaxation prior to the flight.  I wasn't too happy wth Kuoini however when we got to Edinburgh Airport as we weren't able to book our hold luggage straight through for the Luxor flight so had the hassles of picking up baggage when we got to Heathrow, but that was all forgotten once we were eventually in the air and on our way!!

The flight wasn't too bad actually with quite a lot of leg room on the flight and, the encouraging thing was that the flight was quite busy and more tourists arriving is exactly what's needed after the recent troubles.

I'm not quite sure where we were, but here are some photos of some mountains and the sunset on our way to Luxor

 

We arrived in Luxor in the dark, which was a new experience for us, but the heat that hit us when we disembarked was not a new experience, and it was very welcome!!  We already had our Visas but was very surprised when the Kuoni rep directed people to the bank kiosks for their visas, unlike the the other holiday company reps who try to squeeze as much money out of the tourists as possible!  It was then onto the bus and off to the Winter Palace Pavilion.


We had been told that an upgrade to the Old Winter Palace was very likely as the Pavilion had been closed but, on our arrival, the Pavilion had just been re-opened and the anticipated upgrade never happened.  However, we were very pleased (as always) with our Pavilion rooms - here's a wee peek at ours (3009)

It was a lovely refurbished room and was very comfortable.  After a long tiring day travelling, it was just lovely to be back in Luxor to relax.  The men were sent to the supermarket for 'supplies' and I done some unpacking before a little nightcap on the balcony!!

There was one little panic however - I discovered that the adaptors I had brought with me and that I'd been using for years in Luxor, now did not fit the sockets in the newly refurbished rooms!!  Looking around I saw that the TV and fridge were plugged into the new sockets by the use of small adaptors, so I unplugged the TV as we don't really use it anyway, and used the adaptor so I could re-charge my phone.  Here is a photo to try and show the difference - we quickly discovered that these adaptors were being sold in Arkwright's supermarket and were also available on loan from reception

My own adaptor (European two pin) at the top and the new adaptor at the bottom

The adaptors for sale in Arkwrights plug into the new sockets and will take the European two pin as shown, and also the square three pin UK plug and the UK two pin round plug.  It probably takes others as well - here is a photo of the front of the plug so you can see for yourself

I was back in my 'second home' and immediately felt an overwhelming sense of peace!!