Behind again!
And it's not that I'm behind yet, but that I'm about to be! I'm so tired that I don't think I can write much tonight.
We had our 3 AM wake up call and met the rest of the group at 3:45. We headed to the airport and were in Luxor by 7:15 AM. As I said, it's a small group, only 10 people. It had been 24, but the rest of the group canceled. This actually fits with something Mohamed said this afternoon. He told us that our boat was actually an upgrade over what we had been suppose to have, because of what's going on with tourism here. I asked him how much tourism had been hit here, and he said it's down by 60% since the war in Israel started. I think what this meant for us, besides a much smaller group size, is that the fancier boat was willing to take our group, probably under the idea that any paying customers—even if they are paying less—are better than no paying customers. And the boat is nice, but more on that later.
I am a total failure, as it is now Saturday, and I wrote the above on Thursday night. This is a relaxing day on the boat, though, so I'm going to try to catch up.
The ship is called the Steigenberger Royale. It is quite nice, and our stateroom is relatively large. I've only been on one other cruise (Alaska on Norwegian), and our stateroom was only big enough for sleeping, but this one has space between the beds and a seating area by the window. The windows slide open, giving us a great view. Since we have seen no flying insects at night, we've been leaving the windows wide open when we are in the cabin. The bathroom is small, of course, but big enough. I wish they'd used more room for the shower and taken out the bidet, but that's just me.
So, when we flew into Luxor, we loaded onto a small bus and headed to Karnak Temple. It was still early—maybe 8 AM—so we were ahead of most of the crowds and most of the heat. We walked around there for a couple of hours. There were huge columns and incredible carvings, and I couldn't believe how much color was left in the carvings. The site has been reconstructed, so you could see joins and fills in some area, but the amount of art that was intact was amazing. (I think I'm already using the work amazing too often—I'll need to find some synonyms.). The columns were massive.
It's hard to show the scale. The columns stood well over 100 feet tall, and there was a forest of them. Here's a worker on a scaffold next to one of the columns...and there were 134 columns arranged in 16 rows.
This also started my fascination with hieroglyphs. Everyone else is going to have images of statues and pyramids, and I'm going to have hundreds of pictures of cartouches and hieroglyphs.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, as that image is actually from the Valley of the Kings. The glyphs at Karnak were on a larger scale.
There were even colorful glyphs and stories on the ceilings.
There were several obelisks in the center of the temple, which helped us find our way back out at the end.
All the walls had stories (though that's probably not the right word). All the walls told stories of the pharaohs and the gods. I have a fondness for images of Anubis, so I took a lot of pics where I saw his image, but it was all stunning and so colorful (though Mohamed told us that the color was nothing compared to the Valley of the Kings, and he was right). I just found it hard to believe that the colors could still be there after so many centuries (up to 4,000 years ago).
There was also statuary.
We had a few minutes at the end to walk around on our own. I visited a small shop and discovered pomegranate soda. I thought it was a sparkling water when I bought it, but it's actually sweet, but I'm drinking it anyway.
I also asked the attendant if she had a book on hieroglyphics, which she did and I bought, only to discover that it was actually a grammar to use to learn to write hieroglyphics. Overkill for me, as I just wanted to know what the meanings of the glyphs could be.
By the time we met up to leave the site, the temperature had risen and we were all fading, having been up since 3. Also, by this point, Karnak was packed with people—I'm so glad we're getting to sites early! Here's a shot looking toward the temple complex that I took when we arrived. It's hard to believe all that's behind those massive walls.
Our next stop was the Luxor Museum. It's a small museum, but well done. I'm not too much of a museum person, so I was glad that it was small. One of the highlights was interacting with schoolchildren outside. They were thrilled when we said hello back to them. They were quite a contrast to the many children who skip school to spend there time trying to sell things to the tourist. We interacted with them as well, and I'll talk about that later. I did take photos at the museum of the lovely statuary. One that impressed me was this wooden statue.
Then, finally, we headed to the ship. By this point, it was after noon. We'd been up since 3 AM and had eaten only some of a bagged breakfast from the Cairo hotel and we were all starving and hangry. (I had a couple ginger biscuits in my bag, left over from S Africa, that saved me from total starvation.) We got on board and had to sit in the lounge till they had us all registered, then finally we got to eat lunch! I had spurned the idea of resting in the afternoon, but I did crash for a couple of hours after lunch.
I think I'll stop there, and pick up with the lovely sunset and the evening visit to Luxor Temple.
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