This morning we caught an early flight to Luxor. We were able to get onto our boat earlier and had a nice chance to lay in the sun and relax on the boat before our afternoon tour of the East Bank of Luxor. The boat we are on is the Sonnesta Sungoddess. The rooms were nice and the 3 kids are right across the hall from us. Luxor is SO much nicer and cleaner than Cairo and looks really much more lush with bougainvillea along the roads. The boat is 4 stories with a pool and sun deck on top. Because there are hardly any tourists in Egypt because of all the revolutions, tourism is very down. Normally there are nearly 400 boats leaving from Luxor sailing down the Nile to Aswan. Now there are only 40 boats. There are only 30 people on our whole cruise ship- normally holds 60 people. This is a huge advantage as we found out today touring, where there were many less people than normal at the sights. At peak in 2010 they had 20 million people visiting these sights a year. Now less than a million. Not to mention that our cruise was a deal, least expensive thing on our whole trip. If you are wanting to see Egypt- now is the time. The country seems like it is as settled as it can be. They seem happy about the new leader that was put in just a few months ago. They are not big fans of Obama since he was the one that supported the leader that was just ousted- no one in the country liked and felt that he was totally corrupt.
After lunch on the boat we began our tour of the East Bank, the side of the Nile where one or the largest temple areas is- took 1600 years to build this temple. Many pharaohs made their mark here. We were all awed by the huge pillars, the hyrogliphics and the color that is still on some of the walls after 4 thousand years!! We loved all the carvings and the tall oblisques- w which one was still standing in good condition. We had a chance to explore and it was awesome. We all loved it and took tons of photos because everyone in all their colors looked so wonderful against this ancient backdrop and architecture. The next temple we went to was Luxor Temple. Going from the Luxor Temple to the Karnak Temple used to be lined with Syphnx. There are still dozens of them by the Luxor Temple. As we entered there is a great head of a Pharaoh that is perfectly intact out of granite. The temples are out of limestone, sandstone and then some pieces out of granite. Again more spectacular hyrogliphics, went back into rooms one of which was called the holy of holies for the pharaoh and king or pharaoh and high priest. Pharaohs were also believed to be gods. There were only a couple females that were Pharoahs- Nephertiti was the first. Again had fun taking pictures at sunset there. The ruins in Egypt are just incredible. They have so many carvings in them and the history dating back as far as 2000 years before Christ is just amazing. At the Luxor temple you could see old Coptic paintings from where a Christian church was built inside and on top of the Luxor Temple. You can see where they tried to deface some of the gods and then have Christian paintings overlaid.
In the evening we were able to log into the internet although it is so slow I wasn’t able to upload any pictures onto the blog - each photo was taking 15 minutes. I was able to upload a few photos on facebook. I like to upload photos to our blogs just in case anything happens to my computer or cameras. Before dinner there was a belly dance show and a whirling dervish performance. It was very “cruse ship” entertainment but the whirling dervish show was very entertaining with the grand finish of the skirt coming up and off over his head.
Following dinner we were all very tired. We had only had a few hours of sleep and everyone passed out.
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