Luxor · Nightlife

Open daily 06:00–20:00, which means you can arrive in the last two hours and see the colonnade and the Ramesside pylon floodlit with a fraction of the daytime crowd. EGP 500 for foreign adults, EGP 250 for foreign students. It sits in the middle of town, a few minutes' walk from the corniche hotels.

The evening show inside the Karnak precinct, run by the official Sound and Light company: US$20 for adults and US$11 for children aged 6–12, booked direct rather than through a hotel desk. Sessions run in several languages, so confirm which one you are booked into.

Sailing boats work the stretch of Nile in front of the town and are hired by the hour from the landings along the corniche. Sunset is the point of it. Agree the price and the length of the trip before you step aboard, and expect to be asked again at the end if you did not.

The covered market street running behind Luxor Temple, parallel to the corniche. It comes alive once the heat drops and stays open late — spices, galabeyas and a great deal of alabaster. Prices start high for tourists; the food stalls at the far end are where locals actually shop.

No club scene and very little street drinking: alcohol is mostly confined to hotel bars and the Nile cruise-boat terraces moored along the corniche. It also runs to an early alarm — balloon flights lift before dawn and the west bank opens at 06:00 — so most visitors are back at the hotel by ten.