Tag: luxor

The second part of our trip involved flying to Luxor to meet up with our Nile cruise ship.

We didn’t have a lot of choices when it came to picking flights from Cairo to our next stop in Luxor, so we found ourselves being collected by our driver at 4:30 am to go the airport on the other side of Cairo. We were handed “breakfast boxes” made up by our hotel as we checked out (pastries, sandwiches, fruit, juice, and water) which we had to eat before we got to airport security, and which none of us were too inclined to eat in the van at 4:30 am.

The roadside lights of hotels, stores, billboards, roadwork zones, and police roadblocks narrowing the freeway to one lane for no apparent reason, were incredible at night. I almost put on my sunglasses.

Cairo airport security was interesting. First, you had to pass by police at the door, then you had to put your bags through a scanner and go through a metal detector to get into the area with the airline check-in counters (but no one was there to pay attention to any of the metal detector alarms). After checking-in, we collected our boarding passes and proceeded to a lounge. A bit later, when our flight was called for boarding, we realized that there was another security scan to go through, out by the gates. This time it was the Full Monty: laptops out, shoes and belts off, pockets emptied, with separate lines for men and women (because everyone got a pat down, regardless of the metal detector results). We had to scramble to get to our gate in time. As it was, at the gate we boarded buses and were driven all over the place before reaching our plane (some wags suggested we were being driven to Luxor).

Our EgyptAir flight was good, short, and comfortable in Business Class. We arrived in Luxor and met our new guide Mahmoud outside the entrance, along with our driver and van. Off we went to the Hilton Luxor Resort and Spa, a lovely property right on the Nile. We were incredibly early for check-in but Mahmoud went to bat for us at the front desk and got us rooms right away.

In Luxor

Luxor (population 422,000) was something of a relief after Cairo (population 22 million).  

We had programmed a day off into our schedule, so we unpacked, ate, and lounged around the hotel until 4:00 pm when we had a reservation at the famous Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor for High Tea.

The Winter Palace, opened in 1907, is famous and claims guests over the years such as Winston Churchill, Agatha Christie, Howard Carter (discoverer of Tut’s tomb), and various dukes, duchesses, and kings. It has featured as a locale in numerous books and movies, including Christie’s “Death on the Nile” mystery.

High Tea was a memorable collection of scones, sandwiches, and pastries, and we enjoyed them with some nice tea.

After stuffing ourselves, we had a stroll around the gardens out back, which are quite beautiful. They include some exotic animals, such as caged flamingos.

When the sun sets and Muslims can break their day-long fast, they often do it with an immense feast and partying into the wee hours. We found a nice table set up in the garden for such a feast.

We returned to the Hilton for the night, after a strange taxi ride that included an unannounced stop at a roadside oven for fresh pita bread. Our driver was hungry!

The next morning, Mahmoud and our driver picked us up and we went off to tour the sites on the East side of the Nile, which included the huge Karnak Temple complex and Luxor Temple. This was our first experience being guided by him and he wasn’t quite as good as Ahmed had been. For example, he gave us 20-30 minutes of historical introduction while we stood in a corner of a crowded, loud, park entry hall and it was very hard to hear him. Nonetheless, when received, his information was key to understanding what we were seeing around us.

Karnak Temple is a huge place, built up over 1500 years and many regimes, and features a forest of immense columns. A one time, it was the most important place of worship in ancient Egypt. It was beautiful and impressive, and we jostled with quite a few other tourists for views and photos. There were hieroglyphs everywhere, some of which retained a bit of their original coloring. What a sight!

This was our first exposure to acres of hieroglyphics and it was amazing to see the level of effort put into decorating these temples. Mahmoud provided good historical context for the many details of the temples, and explained many of the figures and symbols we saw.

← This is said to be the cartouche of Alexander The Great.

Our next stop was the Luxor Temple which was also immense and very interesting.

Finally, we were taken to our Nile cruise ship, the MS Tulip, one of a fleet of 250+ such ships that ply the waters between Luxor and Aswan. Think “luxury hotel on the water”. We had a nice stateroom with a king-sized bed, in the middle of the ship, with big windows for viewing the passing countryside. The ship has just 42 cabins and wasn’t very full, so it wasn’t crowded.

The ship provided breakfast, lunch, and dinner buffets for us and a super-attentive staff. Luckily, we’d been told to hold our tips and provide one big one for the crew when we left the ship at the end of our cruise. So, having conditioned ourselves to hand out tips to everyone, we now didn’t do so when aboard the ship. Yikes.

Sometimes the world isn’t as big a place as we think. We met a family sitting near us during our meals on the ship who were visiting from Vienna, Virginia, in the U.S., just a few miles from where I lived for 30 years.

We relaxed for the rest of the day on the ship and spent the night docked in Luxor. The next morning, Mahmoud collected us again and we set off for the famous Valley of the Kings, West of the Nile.

The Valley of the Kings is, of course, where for a period of nearly 500 years from the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550 BC) to the Twentieth Dynasty (1069 BC), rock-cut tombs were excavated for pharaohs and powerful nobles under the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt. Many tombs are open for modern day tourists and we went into three of them.

As you can see, the carvings and colors are largely intact and they are glorious. It was hot inside and quite crowded, so everyone kept moving along after getting some good pictures. We had to marvel at the engineering and level of effort required to create these tombs. I’m sure the ancient Egyptians never imagined an “immortality” like this!

Our next stop was an alabaster shop, where six employees outside the front door put on quite a clever demonstration of how alabaster pots are made. Tips were doled out in appreciation.

Once again, the plain outside of the building gave little clue to flashy interior. There was a terrific selection of pottery and carvings on offer and we were given the hard sell, but we managed to get away without spending any money this time.

I confess to feeling bad about not buying anything when the staff goes to such effort to sell, but this was a popular tourist trail stop and there were plenty of other potential customers right behind us.

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Back in the van, we headed for Queen Hatshepsut’s Temple. She was only the second woman to rule ancient Egypt and she did so for about 20 years (~1470-1450 BC). Her reign was a period of great prosperity and general peace, and she was one of the most prolific builders in ancient Egypt.

Our final stop of the day was at the Colossi of Memnon, a pair of giant statues. Then we headed back to the ship in time for lunch and a 1:30 pm sailing, headed for Aswan.

We enjoyed the views from the top deck and eventually sailed through the night up the Nile (“up” is South bound, “down” is North bound – yes, it’s confusing) and woke refreshed and ready for more.

We weren’t alone: we were part of a 19-ship string of cruise ships making its way toward Aswan. The weather was great, the temperature very pleasant and tasty, cold, Egyptian beers were available. By dinner time, the ship was in a large holding bay, queuing to enter a major lock.

While we were waiting, enterprising locals rowed up in small, colorful boats and offered us Egyptian towels, table cloths, and such for purchase.

They were quite good at throwing the items, in small bags, up to the top of the ship, where guests could examine them and then throw back down either the money or the goods.

Sounds like there’d be a lot of lost money or goods in the water but, no, it all worked quite smoothly. The boatmen had apparently had a lot of practice at this.

As it got dark, we were concerned that the small unlit boats would get run down by newly arriving cruise ships but, of course, that didn’t happen.

Overall, our cruise ship experience was very pleasant.

We woke the next morning at Edfu and, after breakfast, walked down the dock to horse-drawn carriages which took us on a 10-minute ride to Edfu Temple. The carriages were worn and the ride was rough and chaotic but we arrived intact.

We’re leaping ahead in time now. Edfu Temple was built in the Ptolemaic Kingdom between 237 and 57 BC. The inscriptions on its walls provide important information on language, myth, and religion during the Hellenistic period in Egypt. Once again, we had beautiful weather but had to contend with crowds in the temple.

Our carriage driver was quite a character and very gregarious,  shouting out to locals as we passed.

← I spotted a pair of young stowaways riding on the back of the carriage in front of us and they did not want their pictures taken, but it was too late.

We went back to the ship for lunch and a rest, and then walked down to the nearby Kom Ombo Temple. This is an unusual double temple, dedicated to two different gods, crocodile-headed Sobek, and the first “god of the Kingdom”, the falcon-headed god Horus the Elder. General construction began during the Ptolemaic dynasty, 180–47 BC, though some additions to it were later made during the Roman period.

One of the more interesting things at Kom Ombo was this carving:

This is supposedly a depiction of ancient beer-brewing vessels and the recipe! We sampled the modern Egyptian brews and liked them. Sakara Gold was the best, I thought.

After our visit, we whisked through the nearby Museum of Mummified Crocodiles (seen one, seen them all). Then it was nice to be able to walk back to the ship at dusk.

Our guide, Mahmoud, sailed with us on the ship, though we saw little of him during our off hours. He was observing Ramadan and could not join us for meals.

The ship’s crew broke their fasting with their own dockside party in the evening and frequently, when we were up on the top deck enjoying a cocktail at the end the day, the barman would rush our check over to us and then apologize for leaving at sunset, so he could go eat.

As the sunset, we set sail for Aswan, the Nubian border, and some amazing sites. Join us in my next post, Part 3, for the continuation of our journey.