Brian Vazquez

Our four day cruise down the Nile was very professionally organized by Eman Rashad, and then led by the very knowledgeable Mohamed Emam. If you can get him as your tour guide, you should! He knows Egyptian history and egyptology extremely well and his passion for Egypt really comes through in his tours, and he is very patient with questions. The temples are of course fantastic, especially Karnak. The cruise boat was fun and relaxing. The food on it was good quality although not excellent, and had both western style and Egyptian food at every meal. The rooms were very comfortable. We tended to see sights in the early mornings before things got too crowded and sailed in the afternoons. As a do-it-yourself jam-pack-your-days type of traveler, I wasn't sure I'd be able to handle a cruise experience where I had no control over the schedule. But in this case it's worth it - there are too many sights that would be hard to see on your own, even if you speak a bit of Arabic. Egypt isn't set up for individual travelers. And Memphis Tours is very accommodating - there were some extra sights we wanted to see in the valley of the workers at Luxor and Mohamed booked us a car and gave us a great tour without advance notice. All the staff very friendly, and it is also clear that a lot of sights are working hard to change for the better (such as hawkers hassling crowds before entrance to sights less frequently). It was great that Memphis Tours was so flexible and accommodating. Also, you can get a discount if you have an international student ID cards at many entrances to the sites (which means memphis tours will discount your total package price).