Egypt: Day 7 (Traveling to Luxor and Luxor Temple)

Note: For all pictures in the blog, you can click on them to make them bigger.

Day 7 required us to wake up at 3:45 AM! We had to catch an early flight to Luxor (Cairo -> Luxor) which was only about an hour flight.

Funny story: If you've read previous entries, we've mentioned that Egyptians always ask for tips. At the airport, a guy lifted our baggage from the floor to the conveyor belt, about 2 feet, and asked for a tip. We obviously didn't want his help but he did it anyway. Dave tipped him a generous $1 for his "great service".

Luxor is south of Cairo (see map on Day 5) but is considered part of Upper Egypt because the River Nile flows from a higher elevation south to north. Cairo is the split between Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt. The East and West Bank of Luxor have 2/3 of Egypt's artifacts.

For the next week or so, we stay on a river boat on the River Nile. The ship either docked at the same location or we sailed in the early morning to get to the destination.

View of Valley of the Kings from our ship (docked at Luxor). See below for a night picture.

This is is our room on the ship. Not huge but definitely larger than an ocean cruise ship room!

On Friday afternoons, Muslims have their weekly service for ~ 1 1/2 hours. The unique part of this service is that it's broadcasted over a series of loud speakers. One anonymous traveler described it as a "Loud angry yelling for 1 1/2 hours straight." There was a mosque right.outside.of.our.bedroom.

Mosque outside of our room on the ship (docked in Luxor).

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Luxor Temple was the first temple we visited in Egypt. We took a lot of pictures here and it's kind of funny, the amount of picture taking of temples drastically goes down as we continue our trip (we pretty much visited a temple every day).

Luxor Temple.

Temples are built inside out - so the outermost ring is the newest. The center part was built in ~1400 B.C. and areas were added on later. Each successive pharaoh added on to temples by building statues of himself and expanding the temple. We aren't sure what pharaohs were involved with Luxor Temple but for sure Rameses II (Egyptology people know, just too lazy to look up).

Entrance to Temple, located in downtown Luxor.

Fawzy was really good about keeping us in the shade (it was in the low 100's on this day). Everywhere we went, he gave us a very detailed history lesson of Egyptology.

Lots of large granite statues and sandstone columns. Notice that some of the statues were de-faced by other pharoahs or Christians. Fawzy made it very clear that Christians ruined several temples because they used it as a place to worship and wanted to get rid of the Pagan gods.

You're not crazy if you think all of the statues look the same! Rameses II had 19 or so statues of himself displayed at Luxor Temple.

Hieroglyphs were everywhere in temples. I bought Dave a t-shirt with his "name" on it. Any guesses on what this nickname is on the t-shirt?

Artsy picture in the middle part of the temple.

Obelisks are single pieces of granite. They're big, really.

Guess who again? This probably isn't what Rameses II looked like. Pharaohs represented themselves as "perfect human beings".

This guy was funny. We didn't want him in the picture but he kept insisting. $$$.

Dave took this artsy picture here, "I think it's kind of neat."

Outside of Luxor Temple is the Avenue of Sphinxes which is a long row of sphinxes. At one point in history, the row was all the way to Karnak Temple (which we visit on a later day). That's over 2 miles downriver!

Up and close with a Sphinx.
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After, we headed back to the ship to relax for the evening. It was already a long day because we got up at 3:45 AM! After dinner, we laid on the top deck of the ship to star gaze which was relaxing but a bit difficult to see stars because Valley of the Kings was lit up at night!

View of Valley of the Kings from the ship.