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December 4th 2005

Published: January 17th 2006

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FullOfContradictions

Mena House

Our hotel room with 18 feet ceilings. Here's the turndown service. Fresh roses every night and slippers by our bed - lovely!

It was quite sad leaving Dahab. As with Siwa, Shane and I wished we had more time. I managed to spend a couple of hours in the sun before we had to pack up and head back to Sharm El-Sheik for our afternoon flight back to Cairo.

Ahh... The famous Oberoi Mena House. This was quite the splurge to stay here but we justified it by saying we were celebrating Shane's birthday by staying here. I am not sure how you could ever top celebrating your birthday by staying in a hotel that was a mere 37 meters away from the last standing ancient wonder of the world. Everywhere we looked, the pyramids towered. The Mena House itself is a former royal hunting lodge and its interior is luxuriously Oriental.

Initially, when we had booked the hotel room through Thomas Cook in Luxor, the agent talked to Mena House reservations and we were assured that we would be staying in the palace itself (lovingly known as "the old wing") with a view of the pyramids. The travel agent assured me three times that this would be the case. So, I was very disappointed when we checked in that our

Mena House

Cookies and fresh fruit were awaiting for us everyday in our room.

room was in the newly built separate building ("the new wing") and not the palace. So I called the front desk asking to be transferred to the the palace. I was told that I would have to pay an extra $150 US a night to stay there. I told him I didn't care what it cost but then he informed me that there were no more palace rooms available. I was quite upset since we had been promised a palace room. So Shane and I trekked over to the palace to have supper and I stopped at the reservation desk on the way. I was told that our voucher said "standard room" with pyramid view and did not specify a palace room. Luckily a wonderful girl at the guest services desk was standing right at the reservation desk and asked me if everything was okay. I burst into tears and told her how much I was looking forward to staying in a palace room, which is what we were told we were getting when we made the reservations, for my husband's birthday. Well, that just changed everything. Marianne (the guest services girl) rushed me and Shane over to her desk

Mena House

More room pics.

and told me that she would straighten everything out. They brought us out some karkadeeh, which is a lovely refreshing habiscus drink while she tracked down our travel agent in Luxor. Sure enough he told her we were supposed to get a palace room. Magically, we got a palace room with a pyramid view despite there being "none available." Incidently, the palace rooms with pyramid views are supposed to be $300 US a night (I would have really have liked to stay in one of the suites in the palace, but for the starting price of $700 US a night, I just couldn't justify it). For the $150 US a night that we paid, we were supposed to be in the "new wing." Basically our agent made a mistake and we got a good deal! The moral of the story is that there isn't anything that a little tears won't solve... Although I don't think we would have achieved the same effect if Shane starting crying. See, it is better to be a girl.

This place was really expensive. It was ridiculously expensive to use the internet ($20 CAN an hour) and the food was also very expensive. However,

Mena House

Here's the bathroom you get for $300 US a night.

the service was impeccable. They brought out water bottles in beautiful wine buckets and would actually wipe off the water bottle with a white serviette before pouring it into your glass. You could not pour your tea out of the teapot before someone would rush over and pour it for you. Of course, you have to tip everyone, too.

The palace was so beautiful - I just had to upload tons of pictures of it. Shane's birthday is tomorrow and we were off to see some pyramids!

Additional photos below

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