Thks for all your posts. Yes, I did received reply frm Amanda, eventually. But by now I have got quotes from other agencies too. One agent "Come To Egypt" gives v good price. I have yet to hear from anyone who knows of this agent and its service.

I booked with LE as well and had no issues. Amanda is great! There were times when it took a couple days for her to get back to me, but it was at the end of Ramadan, or a weekend. We are booked for early January and I cannot wait. We also looked using at Memphis and I have to say, I was not pleased. For our own reasons we do not want to do a shopping/old Cairo day. I told Memphis 4-5 times to take it out of our itinerary and they refused. Said it was a must. It may be terrific, but we REALLY do not want to do that. After having him try to "force" us to do what we clearly did not want to do, we went with LE. Did I mention I cannot wait for our trip??!!

As a follow-up to my previous post, I e-mailed Amanda and asked her for the particulars about our hotels, and she replied the next day. So, my mystery is solved, and she was as response as she was when I was in the planning stages of the trip. I will say I would have liked to know what was booked when it was booked, but I guess I know now so no harm, no foul. Any comments on the Mercure Le Sphinx, Movenpick Aswan, Al Jamila (ship), Sonesta St. George or Cairo Marriott? (now that I know these are my hotels/ship)?

I can only comment on the Sonesta St. George. We stayed next door at the Steigenberger Palace. They had planned to have us stay at the Sonesta St. George but there was a lot of construction going on at the time (this was 2 years ago) so we opted for the Steigenberger. While there we walked through the ground floor of the Sonesta St. George and thought it was even nicer than that Steigenberger Palace, and that was very nice!

I stayed at the Steigenberger in Luxor and I really liked it. We had a fabulous room (118 I think) which was really large and overlooked the nile and pool areas. When I checked out the receptionist commented on what a lovely room I was in. We could see the Sonesta St George from our balcony and there was nobody outside in the pool area. Maybe it was closed off for renovations. I would happily stay at the Steigenberger again.

In regards to the cairo Marriott - my trip report details a few issues I had with the Cairo Marriott. I was there during a time when there were a lot of locals (arabs & folks from the middle east) staying there rather than tourists from USA, UK, Australia etc and I didnt like the atmosphere and service. We even had the room next door being treated like a kitchen with cooking smells and noise going on until the mid evening. We felt we were ignored and my guide said we probably were as they attended to the Arabs who were willing to tip big and pay whatever the hotel charged them. On our second time at the Cairo Marriot a week later, we had a nice time. There seemed to be a different clientele. We were looked after better, the place was not as noisy and the room next to me was not being used as a make shift kitchen by some rich person!