When planning our Greek vacation we left an 8-day window open in our plan for the Egyptian portion of the trip. We knew the family would arrive on a Saturday and figured they might be slightly jet lagged, so we headed south for a couple of days earlier to squeeze in a side trip to Luxor.
This was my birthday gift from CD and boy, was it ever a great experience! Definitely a once-in-a-lifetime. We took some overnight flights to arrive in Luxor at 6am on Friday morning. We stayed at Mara House which is run by Mara, a super friendly and helpful Irish woman. She had someone pick us up from the airport and offered us breakfast as soon as we arrived. Then she gave us all the information we needed to maximize our brief visit and within a couple of hours we had cleaned up, breakfasted and were on our way to tour the sites! She was amazing!!!
Words cannot convey how intricate and spectacular all the tombs and temples were. We started at the Valley of the Kings where we visited 3 tombs: Ramses I, Ramses IX and Ramses IV.
Then, we went to Queen Hatshepsut's temple. The temple has obviously been rebuilt from the ruins as they imagine it looked.
A few more exciting spots: Deir el-Medina, tombs of Sennedjem (one of the valley of the Kings' workers) and Ramose (tombs of the Nobles) and Medinet Habu.
Our last stop for the day was to see the Colossi of Memnon.
That evening we wandered into downtown Luxor (our hotel was behind the train station in a residential area), saw Luxor temple and enjoyed some delicious vegetarian tagines and cold beers by the Nile. People were warm, friendly, helpful and mostly curious. We were repeatedly asked where we came from and it was a relief to see people get excited about Americans. In my past travels, when I would tell people where I was from (mostly during the HW Bush administration), they would frown and start asking about the war or even try to engage in political discussions. I never could stomach to defend the choices my leaders were making at the time (things with which I just didn't agree). Our president had just been to Cairo to discuss the Middle East peace process and whatnot and the whole country was definitely taken with Obama-mania. It was fun!
The next day, we took a trip to see more temples at Abydos and Dendara. Again, spectacular! The best part was learning about the numerous Egyptian dynasties, the Egyptian gods and goddesses (so many!) and trying to decipher some of the hieroglyphs.
That evening we hung out with Kelly, a fellow traveler (incidentally from Seattle). She suggested that we take a ride on a felucca at sunset. It was beautiful on the Nile!
Afterwards, we enjoyed a great dinner at Sofra. Here CD gets ready to dig in:
Our last morning, we went to Karnak temple. It was equally impressive and much closer! It felt like an ancient culture whirlwind, but I loved every minute of it, recommend it and would do it again in a heartbeat!
More photos here!
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