February 2, 2006

We returned from Luxor yesterday, and I have to say, it was a surprisingly nice vacation. We flew down to Luxor which is in southern Egypt along the Nile. It's nice because we get Egyptian rates with our visas, so we're able to pay Egyptian prices for flights and hotels. It makes it much easier to travel within Egypt.

Luxor seems so small compared to Cairo. Everyone there is waiting to offer a service to a tourist. "Caleche? (horse carriage), taxi? felucca?" The men along the corniche (riverwalk) come up to you and call out their services. We both made bets when we stepped out of our hotel about how many people would approach us in one minute. The average was about 3-5 guys in a minute.

There are lots of tourists in Luxor, most are much older than Joe and I, Europeans mainly. They come in on Nile cruise boats or they're bussed in from the airport. Tourism is the people's mainstay in Luxor, so although it requires complete patience on our part, you have to understand why they hound the tourists so much.

The weather was great at this time of year. It's terribly hot there in the summer, so at this time of year it is very pleasant. Joe and I went to the temples and tombs early, starting out around 7 am (pretty good for us), so we were back at our hotel before it was too hot.

The amazing thing about Luxor is that there is so much there. Tombs, temples, huge statues, ruins. We stayed in the New Winter Palace Hotel which is right on the Nile and right next to Luxor Temple. We weren't supposed to get a Nile view room, but luckily they found one for us when we arrived. It ended up being great because we could lounge on our balcony, watching the sunset while feluccas sailed lazily by on the Nile.

The temples were amazing. You wouldn't think they would be until you step up to the entrance. They tower above you. There are so many hieroglyphs, some still retaining their color. I never would have guessed that we would see these things in person. It's interesting to imagine what these sites were like in their time. I liked the grandiosity of the temples, and Joe really liked the Valley of the Kings, where you can find the tombs of the pharoahs buried beneath the desert hills. You climb down into the tombs, passing through hieroglyphed halls and entering tombs where you can find the mummies' sarcopaghuses. Most of the tombs have had their mummies removed to museums and all of the items that were in the tombs were either stolen by tomb raiders or they are also in museums.

The first day we saw the temples of Luxor and Karnak. The second day we took a boat across the Nile and saw the Valley of the Kings, Deir al-Bahri (a temple), the Ramesseum (another temple), and the Colossi of Memnon. It was really cool because behind the Colossi of Memnon they had recently discovered a new archealogical site. There were a lot of men out digging, white tents, and burrows where they were carefully recovering artifacts. It was like a scene out of Indian Jones.

The last day we went to the Museum and lounged around all afternoon, enjoying the sun. All in all, it was an enjoyable few days. We still have a couple days left of our midyear break. I think it will be the last of our vacations for quite some time, but we're both really glad that we went ahead and made it to Luxor.