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Cubicle Dreamin': Cruise the Nile, Sleep at the Old Cataract

Where: Abtal El Tahrir Street, Aswan, Egypt

Cubicle Dreamin' is a feature in which we ask the hotel mavens to take some time out of their busy work day, surf the Internet, and tell us what hotel they wish they could beam themselves to right that very second--all on the slave driving companies dime, of course. Oh, like these people aren't surfing aimlessly anyway--at least now their purposeless clicking will be cobbled together into useful hotel stories--we hope. Have a destination hotel you are just dying to leave your cube for? Send the story our way.

In this episode, Hotel Maven Amanda K "walks like an Egyptian. Ooh wey oh. Enjoy.

Fancy a float down the Nile? I do, but I want to stop at the Old Cataract Hotel near Aswan in the south of Egypt. For a start, I just love the name, "Old Cataract"; although these days the Sofitel tag normally gets hung on the front of that.

The history of the Old Cataract goes back to its opening in 1899 when plenty of rich Nile-cruise travelers began finishing up their trips there. Agatha Christie was one of them and she liked it so much she set some of the scenes from Death on the Nile here.

The modern day version of the Old Cataract has 123 rooms and 8 suites, and I'd like a night in a suite. They look like the elegant yet inspiring kind of place where Agatha Christie would have stayed. At night I think I'd eat in 1902, the French restaurant at the Old Cataract, before setting off to sail the Nile once more ... Ah, if only I'd been born a century earlier and I could have met up with Agatha, too.

Related Stories:
· The World's Best Colonial Hotels [UK Times]
· Hotels in Egypt [HotelChatter]
· Travel Stories in Egypt [Jaunted]

[Photo: TrevorLowe]