Old Cataract Hotel, Aswan

We arrived in Aswan in the early hours of the morning on a flight from Cairo. Even at 3am in the morning the temperature was in the 30s. Our hotel and the setting is absolutely beautiful. When we saw our room, my first thought was, 'Oops, did we click the suite option by mistake?' and then we were told that breakfast was included in the price, which we knew hadn't been when we booked. Tourism is so slow here these days that in the right places you get incredible value for money and we´d even been upgraded. This is the view from our double balcony. We think this room is the biggest and most luxurious we've ever stayed in and the cost is just a little more than a Scottish bed and breakfast!

We had a lazy day exploring the grounds, catching up on sleep and I made a first attempt to befriend my new Macbook Pro, which replaces my 5 year old laptop. It was getting that I really couldn't trust it anymore and I rely on it for work. It's over 20 years since we had Apple Macs and more time will be needed for tutorials!

We walked the 15 minutes into the town in the evening and had a wander round the souk. It was still stiflingly hot though - far too hot for me - and we got a taxi back. It was over 40 during the day today. We stayed well in the shade! Even at 9pm, it was too hot to sit outside for dinner and we had to retreat inside to the aircon. We hope to do a bit of sightseeing tomorrow, but for today it was enough to just be here.