Dianne Fraser

Memphis Tours are the absolute best! In Dec 2010 we planned a cruise down the Nile as part of our vacation in Egypt for late March 2011. I cannot say enough kind things about our tour organizer Abdo Shawky. What a kind and patient man he is! He answered every question I had and assured me many times by email and phone that our cruise had not been cancelled due to the Revolution.

Our decision to go was based on Abdo’s recommendations as well as my son who is living in Egypt on the Red Sea, even though our own government advised travel to Egypt! I am not the least bit adventurous, but in my opinion, the media blew the revolution way out of proportion, to me it sounded as if the whole of Egypt was involved rather than just a few small specific areas. THE REST OF EGYPT IS FINE!!!!!!!!

Abdo was always either a phone call or email away, he actually gave me his cell number!!!! For instance, our flight with Egyptair from Sharm el Sheik to Aswan was changed, which meant we needed to get a hotel in Aswan for the night and reschedule our pickup from Memphis tours. Not knowing hotels in Aswan I emailed Abdo. Within an hour he had booked our hotel and arranged for Memphis tours to pick us up at the airport, take us to the hotel, as well as picked us up the next morning and take us to the boat!!! Amazing service!!!! At one point during our cruise he called to make sure things were okay!!

Our tour up the Nile was incredible…the boat, “The Allysa” was beautiful. The accommodations were first class, the meals were excellent and the service on the boat was superb. Egyptian people are incredibly friendly, happy, kind people. Our Egyptologist for the excursions was a young man name Mohammed. I think he worked freelance and Memphis Tours had hired him for our excursions, amazing wealth of knowledge. Our tour bus was comfortable, air conditioned and they supplied all the tickets to get into the sites. It was incredibly so well organized!

One last thing, we flew from Luxor to Cairo and spent a day there before coming home. We had a guide for the day and at our request took us to Tahrir Square. We walked around, took lots of pictures, let ourselves just absorb what had happened here just 2 months previous. Our guide Arafa, said at one point, we probably needed to hurry a bit because we need to visit the Egyptian Antiquities Museum right at Tahrir Square, before 11:30 because there was another planned demonstration after noon prayer and he didn’t want us to get stuck in traffic!!!!!!!!!

Egypt needs our tourism and they need it now!!!