We knew when we came to Egypt, we had to do a Nile River cruise and see the
amazing historical temples along the way but it wound up being the things
that we did and the people that we met that made the trip a whole lot more memorable
but let's start from the beginning!
Hi Ahmed, how are you?
Fine thank you, and you? - Good, thank you!
All right, checking into our room!
This is exciting! Last time of I did cruise was probably more than 10 years ago
Oh wow! This is our room look at this view!
This is so nice!
I'm actually very happy about how big and spacious this room is!
Now we're going to go check out the rest of the boat and get ourselves acquainted!
All right, let's go!
This is like a lounge area that I guess nobody uses... Nobody's here!
So right up here is where you'd actually go to the roof deck but it's really windy right now!
So we're gonna go check it out in a little bit later. let's get going to the rest of the boat
All right, so the salon bars where all the night activities occur.
Of course, during Covid times we're probably not going to participate, because we really want to keep safe!
Welcome to the lobby! This is where we checked in through and went up to the salon bar
the décor is really nice! so right down here is actually where the dining hall is going to be!
Of course, we are going to have lunch in a little bit, otherwise that's you know,
That's pretty much it!
The boat's not super huge, but big enough.
This is our first day on the cruise and our first meal is lunch.
It's an open buffet. We heard the food is really good and really excited about that!
I am not going to talk so much, just going to show you the food, and then we are off to our first stop!
It's time for our first tour here in Aswan, we're going to go meet our tour guide Ahmed now
from Egypt Gift Tours. They were kind enough to set up everything that we have here for
the next three nights on this Nile River Cruise.
Hello!
Are you ready?
Ready! -Okay awesome!
Are we driving? -Yes - OK!
We couldn't film much in the previous place (the dam) because of the weather, it's a little too hazy
and the police of course wasn't fan of the camera, but hopefully we can film here!
Where are we going? - Philae Temple
I just said be careful!
I hit my head and told Steve "be careful" and then he hit his head literally right after!
Yeh Zayna, Yeh Zayna!
You know Zayna, walla Zayna? You don't know this song?
No...
Zayna means good!
Zayna means good? -Yes!
Cause I'm good!
Only two ways to distinguish in between the ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses
are the headdress and the name. This head dress is the one called Nephthys.
And this one? - This must be ISIS.
This place is incredible I can't believe the ancient civilization
built this, but I'm not a history nerd so I'm gonna let Steve talk further about this place
Of course I'm the history nerd, so Philea temple actually wasn't located on this
island originally, it was located on the island behind us but in order to preserve the temple
they actually broke it down into 40 000 separate blocks and transported over to this island
this whole temple was under water for seven months of the year before the dam was built and it is the
temple for the goddess ISIS. This actually was the last temple ever built by the ancient Egyptians
Unfortunately, the Romans came in and chiseled off all of the faces here. The cool thing though
is you still get to see so much well-preserved ancient Egyptian history. We're gonna go explore
the rest of the temple before we head back for the evening.
Time to go!
Yallah! - Yallah (Let's go in Arabic)
bye-bye
Now it's just all relaxing for the rest of the evening and we're gonna enjoy dinner.
Can't wait to show more of this cruise in the morning.
So one whole day and we actually haven't moved anywhere from Aswan yet, that's actually our hotel that we stayed at
two nights ago now... We're kind of surprised that we're on a cruise ship and for 24 hours,
and we haven't cruised anywhere. We're going to finally take off this afternoon after lunch to Kom Ombo
It's got us excited about that because it's supposed to be one of the amazing spots here in Egypt.
We try to film upstairs but it's very windy right now so we came back to our room,
but we're finally moving and we're so happy to finally sail on the Nile River, the sceneries are amazing!
It's just such a unique experience and we're so happy that we got to do this!
Don't touch me, don't touch me!
On the way to Kom Ombo temple there is a lot of people waiting for the cruise ships
of course to come off and they want to sell you something
I got harassed but that's okay they're not trying to harm me but just one person tried to touch me, I was like
"Grrr, don't touch me!"
So after three whole hours of cruising, we made it to Kom Ombo temple outside of Aswan, it is popular
because they are actually celebrating two gods here from ancient Egyptian times; Horus, as well as
Sobek, the crocodile god!
The ancient Egyptians hoped that by celebrating a crocodile god, they would stop the crocodiles in the Nile river from eating the ancient Egyptians
which i guess that made sense at the time? :)
Sobek tried to get rid of Horus (Sobek's brother) at some point.
As an ultimate compromise they settled on dividing this temple into two.
So right behind me is the first ever calendar in ancient Egypt.
And they actually calculated 365 days based upon observing Sirius (the brightest star in the night sky)
For 295 days it was there, and for 70 days it was gone.
They had three seasons, and each month had three weeks and they added an extra month.
So 13 months for the extra five days.
Really damn impressive that they were able to figure that out thousands of years ago!
I still can't wrap my head around about how this place was built by an ancient civilization!
Everything is so detailed and perfectly carved in everywhere.
I can't take my eyes of it it's like out of this world!
Hey Ahmed, do you like my new bag?
Do you like my jacket?
While Gokce enjoyed the temple Steve and Ahmed held her stuff
They mummified all these crocodiles here at Kom Ombo Temple
There's also a crocodile museum, apparently the ancient Egyptians decided to get creative and also try to mummify crocodiles
We have a boarding pass for the ship, so we can go back to our cruise! Right, Hayatim? (my life)
I can't wait! -And then dinner!
Back to the ship!
All right, wow! Tonight's dinner is rocking and rolling!
Wow, it's so good!
So it's Mediterranean night here on the ship and we are actually super delighted about that
they have kofta (kofte) - yeah Turks! - they're actually gonna do a traditional kind of Egyptian show later tonight
so i guess they brought out more of the Egyptian food which is similar of course to Turkish food from what we've seen so far
time to enjoy dinner after Kom Ombo temple and see you later for the show
Don't get confused, this is our friend from Colombia!
Good morning! It is really early, before 6:30am and we're up and about.
We're at the salon lounge now trying to get hot water for our "two in one" Nescafe
they also serve orange juice ready for us to help wake us up because we're gonna explore Edfu temple today
This is gonna be exciting!
We are in fact have a horse ride this morning yeah
and we are headed with our guide right now to go!
What's your name?
Ahmed!
So have you ever done a horse drawing carriage before?
I actually did! - This is a first for me
- Really? - Yeah
In turkey, where I grew up we used to have these (horse carriages) a lot! So at night when you're too tired to walk back home
or had so much alcohol in your system you could always take a horse carriage and go home!
It turns out, unfortunately, we really didn't beat the crowd and it's just opening now
and everybody's on the line! Oh well I'm sure it'll be beautiful
Welcome to the Temple of Edfu, this is actually the temple for the God Horus!
And Gokce is still trying to get all the gods in order.
I'm very confused by ISIS because she is basically a mistress of a lion God, and then also she can fly!
She also has another husband that she dismantles and put together a bunch of times...
and she is also a mother... there's so much information about ISIS that confuses me so much!
I'm trying to get it together! There is a lot to know about ancient Egyptian times and their god so yeah
It's a lot to digest so thankfully we have such a good guide to show us around here
Ahmed is great!
We have to head out of Edfu temple now and get back to our boat unfortunately, for breakfast fortunately!
Oh my gosh there's a bit of chaos right outside of Edfu temple to get back to our
horse carriage! Hopefully, we can find our guy and get back to the boat. Wow, it's very chaotic here
Rambo! Rambo! okay
Steve, how is it?
Tell me! - A lot of fun!!
Thanks Ahmed!
Ferrari!
Go Ferrari!
Rambo, Ferrari, Rambo!
Well that was really crazy they actually let me ride the horse back to the boat well now we are
sailing again we're heading off to Luxor today. And it is going to be our last full day here on the boat.
So we're going to head downstairs grab some breakfast and then figure out what the
heck we're going to do for the rest of the day until we get to Luxor.
I hope you guys can hear me with this wind but we're going right now through what is known as the Esna Lock
There are two dams in a row and there's a small passageway for ships to get through. And there are sellers
on boats throwing stuff up onto the boat for cash payment down below it's really wild to see.
and they drop off at the absolute last moment before you get to the lock before they get kind of crushed.
Just to make a sale, it's wild...
The ship behind us and us are on the platform and we're tied to the side. And this platform is going lower and lower so we can actually be able to go underneath that bridge over there
This is so cool, we've never seen something like this before!
So you can actually kind of see from this boat directly behind us
how high up we actually were and how much we've dropped because this one's still actually at the level we were before!
We're underneath the brdige, this is so cool!
Now that we're through the lock, and we're almost to Luxor we just wanted to go over
a few things that made this a little bit different than an American or European cruise.
So just up front, you are going to be paying extra for the activities, but they're very careful in letting you know about that
One of the things that we were a little surprised about I guess you could say is that the drinks besides coffee and tea at breakfast not included
not even water! There are workarounds, but in the dining halls themselves for lunch dinner you basically
have to pay for drinks also those dining hall times they're very set in stone so if you kind
of oversleep breakfast, you're out of luck until lunch to get any food there's no wiggle room
like there is on an American cruise with a 24/7 buffet! Set your alarm clock and wake up for breakfast!
But let's talk about the positives! First and foremost, we would like to thank to
Egypt gift tours for helping set this cruise for us! They provided us a guide, Ahmed, who has been
extremely helpful and he makes us feel like we have a VIP service here because he comes over
to check in with us multiple times a day, making sure that we are enjoying this cruise.
That is something that you actually don't get when you go on the cruise lines in the western countries
And another thing that we really like about this cruise was the spacious bedrooms, it has so much space,
and big windows.... You can even enjoy the beautiful night river scenery so it really felt like a hotel room
rather than a cabin on a cruise. And lastly, you can bring your food and drinks on board as long as
you consume them in your room you can even bring your alcohol as well!
Overall, we had a great time here sailing on the Nile River has been an amazing experience that we will never forget all our lives.
But, right now, we're approaching to Luxor. Tomorrow morning we're gonna get up early and explore the
sights in Luxor for which we're so excited!
Hopefully you stay tuned, we'll see you then!
These are the biggest columns in the world, can you believe that?!