Luxor!!

The second day was the longest and most packed day because Luxor is the city with the most ancient Egyptian sites to see.  I suggest google-imaging the monuments and such if you want to see what they look like :o)

Everyone was sad to only get about 4 hours of sleep in the amazingly comfortable beds, but we got to sleep a little more on our plane to Luxor.  We flew Egypt Air for all of our flights and they are pretty much my new favorite airline because they never make you turn off you electronic devices!  They were so much more relaxed than airlines in the USA.  They never checked your ID or anything and you had to scan your carry on bag once or twice (depending on the airport).  Luckily the planes were always completely filled with SAS students otherwise I would have been a little freaked out by the lack of security.  Also, they don’t really have gates in the airport (well the Cairo one had a few because it was the largest airport) but you just all gather by the gate, which could have several flights leaving from that gate, and when they call your flight you all board buses that make trips back and forth to where your plane is and then you walk up the stairs to the plane.  The flight to Luxor was the only one where we were split onto 2 different flights – the first at 6:20am and the second at 7:00am, hence the early wake up call.  I was on the 7:00am flight so I had a long time to wait in the Cairo airport.  Our plane was also really comfortable with leather seats that were bigger than normal (only 2 on each side of the aisle) so it was easy to fall asleep during the hour flight.  I looked out the window a little and we were definitely just flying over lots and lots of desert and it was cool to see the Nile from above – definitely a HUGE river!

When we arrived in Luxor we went straight to the buses and then to the Valley of the Kings.  The Valley of the Kings is where they started burying all of the kings when they realized that pyramids were a huge attraction to tell thieves where the tombs were.  It was a huge mountain valley and was really, really hot – someone said that it reached 114 degrees, but I’m not sure about the accuracy of that.  We had tickets that allowed us to visit any 3 tombs and our guide told us some of the best ones to see.  King Tut’s tomb is there too but it costs extra to go inside and our guide suggested that we skip it because he was a young king who died very suddenly so his tomb is small, unfinished, and not that impressive.  I went to the tombs of Horemheb, Ramses IX, and Ramses IV.  It is so cool to go into the tombs!  You go into the mountains and the tunnels and chambers that are dug are so impressive and all the artwork and hieroglyphs on the wall are crazy.  A lot of the original paint is still there too because they aren’t exposed to sunlight.  I was a little surprised at how a lot of the walls weren’t protected by ropes or plastic or anything so you can just touch where the carvings are.  All the tombs have a little bit of different character to them depending on the king so it was nice to have Muhammad there to explain everything and the themes that you see in the artwork.

After the Valley of the Kings we went to the temple of Queen Hatshepsut.  She was the only ever female Egyptian pharaoh and had the temple built it a very non traditional style.  In the pictures it definitely has a different look from all of the other Egyptian temples we saw.  Unfortunately, a lot of her images were destroyed by her successor because he didn’t like that she was in power but there was one remaining painting of her with Osiris in a corner of the temple.  This was the only temple with different levels – for varying levels of nobility.  We had about an hour to explore the temple and take pictures before getting back on the bus.

Then we drove to the Colossi of Memnon which is just 2 giant statues next to each other.  The main aspect of this site is that the pharaoh made a mistake by having one statue cut completely from one stone and the other one made from several stones set on top of one another.  Apparently it is like a huge mistake to have them not symmetrical because everything in Egyptian architecture is symmetrical.  We had about 10 min to get off the bus and take pictures but there wasn’t really much else to do at that site.

Then we headed to our hotel, Nile Palace, for lunch which was another amazing buffet.  Then we checked into the hotel by about 2:00pm.  The hotel was amazing and had like 5 different restaurants in it, shopping, a pool, tennis court, etc.  Our room had a balcony that looked out into the giant courtyard with a fountain.  The room and beds were not quite as nice as the first hotel but we still each got our own full beds (only with one pillow each) and a decent size bathroom.  We had an hour to settle into the room and then we were back on the bus at 3:00pm to continue touring.

We went to the Karnack Temple first which is one of the largest temples in Egypt – it was so HUGE!  There were endless columns completely covered in hieroglyphs and they were the largest ones I have ever seen.  There was also the largest obelisk in Egypt which was built for Queen Hatshepsut, and the oldest Obelisk in Egypt which was built for one of the Ramses.  Our tour guide led us around at first and then gave us about 30 min to take pictures and look around more.  There is famous statue of a scarab beetle on a pedestal and you are supposed to make a wish and walk around it 7 times for it to come true so I did that during the free time in addition to taking pictures all over.

Next we went to the Luxor Temple which was built by Ramses II.  It is not as large as Karnack Temple but is known for having the 2 giant seated statues of Ramses II at the entrance.  We learned that you can always tell if the statue is of Ramses because he is the only king depicted with both the pharaoh scarf and the crown at the same time.  Usually it is just one or the other but Ramses II thought he was the most amazing ever so he is always depicted with both.  This temple had a small area that was made into a church by Alexander when he conquered Egypt so there are several scenes featuring him on the wall.  This temple also featured a lot of the fertility god which we always found entertaining because as our guide says his “obelisk” is always prominently featured.

After that we went back to the hotel around 6:30pm and had time to shower and relax before dinner at 8:00pm.  We had another fabulous buffet with tons of food and desserts galore.  After dinner Andrea, Lauren and I hung out on my balcony and watched this crazy show that was being put on in the courtyard.  There were men and women dressed in crazy Egyptian pharaoh outfits and doing different dances and changing outfits between songs.  The dances were kind of ridiculous and we couldn’t figure out if they were trying to do dances from all sorts of ethnicities or something because there was one dance of this guy spinning a bunch that reminded us of Turkey, some belly dancing, and one were they danced with clicking spoons.  It was very interesting and we watched until about 11:00pm before heading to bed before another early wake up call tomorrow.

Our wake up call was at 6:30am the next day so we could be at breakfast by 7:00am.  This time it was a buffet breakfast with a whole assortment of pastries, tons of hot food, and even an omelet bar.  Then we checked out of the hotel and left for the airport at 7:30am for our flight to Aswan!