Hotels - rooms with no views

What sort of hotels have we found? Well in general we have done very well. We have sought out budget hotels, although not necessarilly the very cheapest and have paid between 7 english pounds and 35 pounds per night including breakfast in all but the Aqaba hotel. Those in Egypt have been cheaper (as with everything) than in Jordan and have varied considerably in what they provide and how much of it is working. Only our one night in Aqaba could rate as a run down place, it called itself the Hospitality Palace and whilst hospitality was on offer, palatial it wasn't. But even that one was in a great postion. Best of all was Dahab, a large balcony and sea view, the sound of wave lapping.

Sound or rather noise is a big issue of course. Many places are in noisy lanes and streets and with the exception of Dahab all have been close to at least one and sometimes several Mosques - we are well used to the 5am call to prayers, the verses end in the morning with 'Prayer is better than sleep' - not something we have found agreement to. We also suffer from cockerels, the Aswan hotel was surrounded by collapsed mud buildings (the result 6 years ago of an unpredendented 24 hour rain storm) and these were occupied by sheep (quiet) and chickens and cockerel (not so quiet and getting in the swing of things even before morning prayers) How delighted we were to find that the flat roof across from our current room has chickens and a cockerel in fine voice!

We suffer from short sheets, pillows that are in fact carefully selected large desert rocks covered in a pillow case, sometimes lack of hot water, but little else bothers us. On arrival here in Luxor at the excellent and friendly Princess Hotel on a small lane we lay down for a short siesta before tackling the Luxor Temple - the local community kindly laid on a demonstration of motorcyle rallying, car horn testing, childrens games and loud debating among the grown ups , plus a little metal working - but it does get quiet later and this really has been a pleasure to stay at, lovely people (run by a Frenchwoman Emmanuel and her Eqyptian husband).

Everywhere has been clean and in most places there are roof top or lobby places to sit and chat with other travellers. We don't envy those people in the posh hotels one little bit (except for the pillows - we saw a group getting off a coach and boarding one of the Nile cruisers all clutching big fluffy pillows and found ourselves thinking about a quick pillow mugging).

Brian