One Night and Dinner in The Basma Hotel | Aswan

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

After arriving at the Basma Hotel, our tour guide handed over our keys and room numbers. Something I loved about being with a tour group is that the tour company pre-arranged everything and I didn’t even have to go through the hassle of checking in while in a foreign country.

Basma Hotel is located on very high ground, possibly the highest point of Aswan. Basma Hotel is a huge hotel complex with 200 rooms and a very big swimming pool. I saw a huge piece of artwork hanging on the entrance door wall that looked like it was made of mosaic or marble. The front of the hotel gives access to amazing views overlooking the beautiful greenery, the city of Aswan, mountains, yellow sand dunes and the amazing Nile River.

It looked like rooms can have 2 different types of views. Rooms on one side will have the Nile view and on the other side will have the city view. Regardless, you get to see the surrounding mountains and yellow sand dunes.

My room got the city mountain view. The problem with this hotel was that it was too old and crying for a renovation. My room had 2 beds. Ultimately, I was OK with my room. It felt clean and tidy, except everything was old. The bathroom was nothing fancy, but acceptable.

I even had a balcony, but a weird thing made my balcony and views feel weird. It looked like square blocks of concrete structures on the floor level outside my balcony. I was not sure what those were or why they were in front. They could be structures to support the building or something else. They were not directly blocking any views because they came up from the ground up to my balcony floor level. But if I looked from my high floor to the ground, then they block the view. The presence of these concrete blocks made me not like my room as much as I could otherwise. So, I didn’t get to enjoy the balcony and full city view with the mountains beyond.

In the evening, some of my tour members went for an extra tour to the Nubian village, which I skipped. Instead, I took a stroll around the hotel vicinity. I took my time to walk the whole complex and took some pictures and videos. I even exited the hotel boundary to mingle in the local busy streets and browse the shops right next to the hotel, but didn’t stay outside the hotel for too long.

In the evening, I had my coffee inside my suite. I used the hotel-provided instant coffee, although I had my own backup coffee. After coffee, I took some time to write down my travel details and back up SD cards to my portable hard drive. I had been taking notes of my travel details daily to help me write later on.

At night, I headed for dinner at the hotel restaurant. I had a beef curry with rice. The price was 150 LE, which would be $12 CAD. I found the food here was good and they were more attentive than the Oasis Hotel in Giza. The prices were cheaper also with greater quantity.

The next day we would spend the night in the middle of the Nile in a Felucca Cruise boat.

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