Karnak

On Tuesday afternoon we took the 3:00 boat into town fora visit. It's lovely on the boat -- takes a long time to go upstream, which means where was plenty of time to eavesdrop on our fellow passengers. Lots of package tour Brits -- proof that Egypt is the new Spain -- Costa del Nile? They were complaining about the food, the price of beer in the hotel, etc. I mean, food and drink is always overpriced at a hotel. But anyway. Also the number of times we heard people talking about going into town for "a McDonald's" made me cringe.

Arrived in town and went to Luxor Temple. Really had to fend off the guides and the guards who point at something really obvious, say "sphinx", and then want a tip. The temple, however, was very cool -- the columns were amazing, especially the "bunch of papyrus" ones. Some beautiful carvings -- lots of "fertile" Osiris in, umm, full bloom. Very hard to process that one of these areas was built by Alexander... and depicted him as pharaoh. Still hard to get my mind around that. I mean, the pharaohs seem almost mythical, but Alexander? Wow.

Did a little walking around Luxor afterwards, ran across the sanitized tourist bazaar but couldn't face it. I mean, there's just nothing I want. I can imagine getting caught up in it all and buying statuettes, papyrus paintings, etc. But I don't want any of those things, really. I do regret not getting the Tut-mask toenail clippers, however. ;)

Then over to the Winter Palace, where we used their exquisite bathrooms and walked around their pretty gardens before catching the shuttle bus back toward Karnak. We asked the driver to let us out in the village, and looked at a couple of places before choosing Nefertari for dinner. We met the owner, a kind man who had studied in Walthamstow and had a shop in Bristol. Wil's tummy had been bothering him again, so we asked if he could just have some rice and steamed veg -- simple. I had some mezze: babaganoush, tabbouleh, and falafel. When it came it was perfect -- lovely fresh, clean food. Very nice -- best falafel ever.

We finished, paid, and went down to the road just in time to flag down the shuttle back to the hotel. Perfect! Then an early night.

Yesterday we got up at 5:30, and were out the door before 6 to go to Karnak. Perfect timing. Other than the fact that the guards made us do a big loop past an empty set of stores to get to the ticket booth (rather than walking 100 feet past the guards directly to the booth), it was perfect. Hardly any people, no one trying to be our guide, lovely pink sunrise. Glorious. We wandered around for a coule of hours -- the hypostyle hall was amazing -- so many pillars! It's all a bit overwhelming -- I keep feeling like I'm in a movie set, which is ridiculous, but... Really liked Hatchepsut's obelisks, the "botanical garden" reliefs, the massive pylon gates. One enterprising guard had moved the "area closed - no entry" sign but pulled the metal gates across the opening. When we got close, he noisily moved the gates and kept telling us it was okay. But we didn't want the hassle. Around 8:30 we walked back to the hotel, where we had breakfast and then hung out by the pool.

In the early evening we took the shuttle -- getting dropped off at Karnak and then feeling silly because it was so close -- but as Wil said, it will have given the package tourists something to talk about. Had dinner at Nefertari again, which somehow wasn't as nice. Don't know why. Then walked from there to Karnak temple, where we bought the Very Expensive tickets to the Sound & Light show. 100 LE! It was very different than the one at Giza. In this one you walked from place to place in the temple and learned different things along the way. Kinda cool to walk around with the temple lit up like that. It ended in the seats overlooking the sacred lake, which was a bit of an anticlimax. Still, nice. And very different from the one at the pyramids. Then home, where we stayed up late and finished the bourbon.

Today (8/6) is our last full day here, and we've done everything we wanted to do. So we slept in, had a late breakfast, and have been swimming and lazing ever since. At 3 we'll take te boat into town and wander a bit before having a late lunch / early dinner at Sofra, before going home to the hotel to prep for the next 2 days of travel.

At breakfast we were surprised to see a bunch of people we heard talking about how they were leaving yesterday. Apparently their charter flight had been cancelled, stranding a bunch of the package tourists for an extra night. We want to ask for details but don't want to talk to anyone. Happy that we're on a scheduled flight!