The cruiser is way better than I expected. "Sonnenklar"' it is old but still in pretty good nick. It's German, the passengers are German, the crew all speak German and all the signs are in German. I suppose I will survive, I know where my room is and the restaurant so that is the main thing.

We are scheduled to stop at Esna, but I would also like to stop at Eddy and Kom Ohmbo. As it turns out I think we passed Kon Ohmbo just after dark so it was hard to take photos cos my camera was trying to focus on all the lights. We stopped somewhere during the night (I think Edfu) but we left too early to do any exploring. We only stayed at Esna for an hour but it was long enough to see the temple. I'm getting better at reading them already. The last pic of the temple is Hathor, the mother of all pharaohs depicted with the cow horns. Also the sun disc in the middle cos she is the daughter of Ra, the sun god. She is standing behind Khnum, the ram head god and he is holding the award of victory to smite his enemy...........or it is non of that.

Just while I remember, the Nile is a strange river. It seems really calm and doesn't appear to be flowing at all, till you see a boat try to cross it. Then you really see how fast it is flowing.

As for the cruise. They charge for every drink, even water with a meal, and the prices are crazy. Double for beer or softies and three times for water. The passengers are German and I said hello to most of them and got nothing back. All the signs are in German and the crew speak German so not much gets explained to me. The one thing that did get explained to me was the tips. I was given and envelope to put tips in and told £70 was the proper amount. I said I didn't know if I was going to get good service yet but was told I would so I should tip NOW. My cabin is brilliant, spotlessly clean, nice bathroom, TV and fridge. The meals are pretty good and the whole thing is pretty comfortable. It cost me $100 to come up here on the sleeper train, and $100 on the boat to get 1/3 rd of the way back. Overall I think it has been good value for money. And my washing is up to date.
They lost me when we got to "Luxor". We are about 15miles south of the real Luxor. It is a raft up, there are 4 boats tied up together and I have to walk over3 others to get off. There is bush out here. I walked about a km up the road to a cafe and we had to send a taxi to get beer. That is how remote this is. Now I am at the mercy of the taxi mafia to get to Luxor tomorrow morning.