Up the Nile in Luxor

After 3 days in Cairo, we took the night train to Luxor, where we stayed at the Bob Marley hotel. Ran by a really nice guy, they bought as many copies of every Bob Marley poster they could find, and put them up. It was about $8 a night for the two of us, in a private room with a really good breakfast on the roof included. Egypt is very cheap if you are careful. Cairo has 20 million people - it's the biggest city in Africa, so the corner store isn't really interested in overcharging tourists - at least he isn't set up to do so. As we travelled up the Nile to Luxor, we found more and more people who made a living getting as much out of tourists as possible.

It took a little getting used to, and Lillian made sure we learned Hindu-Arabic numerals right away, so we were able to minimize (note I don't say eliminate ) the price gauging. Part of the problem is that if someone wants to overcharge you, they generally have more time to devote to the bartering process than you do - it's their job. Sometimes you pay to avoid the attrition of it all. Or you're just tired or hungry. But again, for the most part, we did okay in Luxor.

We really enjoyed Luxor. Luxor was Thebes way back when and so it has more ancient sites than anywhere else in Egypt. We found some information online about how to hike out of the Valley of the Kings, and did so. It was well worth it. As we came over the ridge we were able to see the green fields of the Nile valley and the desert again on the other side. Mainland Egypt really is a desert with a river in it. It's a strange sight.

Really there is too much to tell. Here are some pictures. Let's start with....

Night train to Luxor. First class does have it's privileges.



Karnak. This is the largest ancient religious complex on the planet. They built on it for hundreds of years. After 5 hours we'd seen about a quarter of what was originally there.










They had airplane waver-inner guys even back then.





Valley of the Kings: No pictures are allowed in the tombs. Here are a few from our hike.



We took the picture of the Temple of Hapshepsut (this giant thing) from above on our hike.




This statue is/was the Rameseum, it inspired the poem Ozymandias by Shelley, and consequently the character in the Watchmen books/movie. I think it was the tallest statue the Egyptians ever built.





We were here in the afternoon, and sat in the shade to eat our lunch, just where this photo was taken from. We had the whole temple to ourselves. Photos are worthless in a sense. The feeling of just sitting there with the sounds of the desert, and this giant stuff, everywhere, it can only happen in Egypt. No one else was building that big, that long ago. And with zero rain, the paint is still there in so many places - even bright at times.





European tourists and Napoleon's troops came through and felt obliged to sign everything.



The Luxor museum was really good. If you've seen the Nova program "The Mummy who would be King", you know about Ramses I. Now he is here.


Of course no photos allowed in the museum, but here is a picture from the internet. This is alabaster, so almost see-through in parts, and about 7 feet tall.