My husband and I are travelling with the Jewels tour on March 9. We are beginning to plan for the trip, but since we have never done anything like this before we are unsure of a few things and would like some suggestions.
1) How much currency should we bring with us? I realize this is a tricky question for anyone to answer, but what can we expect to need from day to day? 25 euro each? 50 euro? I am not looking to get away with as little as possible. Can you give me a range of what to expect?
2) Is it easy to exchange traveller's cheques in Egypt? Are there recommendations for what brand of traveller cheque? Should we bring US dollars or English pounds in addition to Eqyptian pounds?
3) Electrical sockets, Euro 2 Pin? Is mains power available on the boat?
4) On thing that was mentioned in our travel book was
Re: Jewels of Egypt March 2008
Hi,
I can answer a couple of questions. Knowing how much money to take is tricky and I can't quite remember what I spent so will veer away from that question. You might want to think about whether to budget for any larger items i.e. papyrus pictures, having rugs shipped home, gold jewellery as these are the things you may wish to spend more on.
I took travellers' cheques as well as English pounds, Egyptian pounds and US dollars. I found that the travellers' cheques were relatively easy to change but banks tend to have strange opening times. There was no point taking dollars really. The easiest thing is just to use your normal debit or visa card as there are points all over but obviously you want to take a back up.
Be a bit wary of the sockets as sometimes they don't look as safe as ours. You can usually find somewhere to plug in mobiles etc. I think it was 2 pin.
You keep a tab on the Melodie for drinks and laundry. The boat is the main place to get washing done as it is quite reasonable and comes back very clean. Pack for a week and then wash stuff on the boat. You find that you often want to change a couple of times a day as you may go out early, get a bit hot etc riding a camel and then change before lunch so take enough to be able to do that.
One tip with packing that I had not considered too well is that you have to pack and unpack your bag very frequently so don't pack things in too tightly (as I would for 2 weeks in the same place ) as it will be annoying to try to stuff everything back in again - plus all the extra you will definitely buy!
Have a great time. Hope some of that was useful.
Lyn
Re: Jewels of Egypt March 2008
Thanks for all the information. You have helped a lot.