We left Cairo for the short flight to Luxor, where we stayed overnight at the Mercure Hotel. Our room just happened to be right above the disco, which sounded more like we were in the disco, so that made for a loud night until the wee hours. Later in the morning our guide took us to our boat docked near the Sheraton Hotel on the Nile, The Admiral. We got to check into our room fairly early, so it was nice to just relax. We are pleasantly surprised with our room. Since this is our first cruise experience, and this boat isn’t nearly the size of the ocean liners, we weren’t sure what to expect, but our room isn’t all that small and has a nice bathroom, too. We toured the Karnak and Luxor temple compounds this afternoon in incredible heat….about 45 C they estimated. Broiling. The Karnak area is enormous, monuments everywhere, countless pillars shaped in the form of papyrus and lotus blossoms, carvings everywhere and statues of pharaohs. This is the anxious capital of Egypt once called Thebes, dating from 1550-1069 BC…..hard to really grasp that many years past, especially to see what they created with no tools. Solid rock. It was a tourist attraction even for the ancient Romans and Greeks. We’ve seen statues of Ramses and King Tut.
We share a dining table with a couple from Johannesburg, South Africa, Clive and Sharon. We’ve enjoyed our visits together during meals, and I think they will join us tomorrow for the tour of the West Bank. We are actually supposed to leave at 6:30 AM, a bit early, but after the extreme heat of today, I would rather beat the heat, see things before we broil and chill for the afternoon.
Pictures of the day:
http://picasaweb.google.com/johnacrews1/NileCruiseKarnakAndLuxorEgypt#
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