We stayed in this hotel because of the reviews and I was a little surprised that it was so bad. I often dismiss bad reviews on the basis that a lot of people are more anal than me, so I will focus on the worst bits and try not to quibble too much about details.
Before arriving in Luxor we had been warned (by Egyptians) that people often try to short change you. It only happened to us twice, and both times were at this hotel.
As always there is always an element of doubt when you are short changed as to whether it was intentional or not, so I will leave you to judge for yourselves. When I checked in I gave over two 200 egyptian pound notes to pay a bill of 292 pounds. The change I recieved was 8 pounds. When I pointed out the change should have been 108, the multilingual receptionist made a show of checking the sum on his calculator before hitting himself in the head, apologising and then producing a further 100 pounds (which we think) came from his back pocket. The second short changing was for a can of coke, so somewhat cheaper and a different bloke.
The tours that the hotel were trying to sell to us were about three times the cost of what seemed to be the going rate at the time we were there, although I do have a theory that this price could have been artificially inflated to make another guys price seem more reasonable.
The rooms were mainly clean, although most of the sheets and pillow cases had stains on them. I am pretty sure the were pretty well washed, but it can be a little offputting.
The sheets on the double bed were a little wierd. As often seems to be the case in egypt, the double bed was two single beds pushed together. The wierd part was that they seemed to have covered it with single bed clothes. The bed was covered in single sheets laid sideways. The top sheet that we were supposed to lie under was also a single sheet laid sideways, which left our legs exposed to the itchy thing that was laid over the top of it. We found a blanket in the wardrobe which we decided to use instead, which I made the mistake of pulling close to my nose at one point in the night. Smelt like stale sweat.
To rectify the bed situation we asked for an extra blanket in the morning. When we got back to the hotel we found no extra blankets (although the one that was there seemed to have been changed for a clean one), but there was now no sheets for us to sleep under. I had to ask for a couple of sheets to rectify the situation, which to be fair were handed over without too much fuss.
Breakfast was small and we were presented one morning with a crusty yellow piece of cream cheese. Whilst the hotel advertises satellite TV it doesn't appear to be in all rooms, though I didn't go to egypt to watch TV.
Overall, the hotel is pretty cheap, and perhaps the quality reflects this. The location is good, but I find it difficult to believe that you couldn't do better for a similar budget, so we would try a different one if we returned to Luxor.
- Hotel Little Garden
- Little Garden Luxor
