Last week my parents were visiting with us and we took a trip down to Luxor to check out the history. There is so much to see in the city formerly known as Thebes, it is pretty tough to sum it up well without doing it an injustice, but I’ll try. Our explorations began with our guide, Achmed of Amazing Global Travel, taking us to Karnak Temple. There are rows and rows of huge columns and ancient walls covered in hieroglyphs. We were there in the late afternoon light photographers call “golden hour” and the stones and statues all looked yummy. And apparently we looked pretty good to all the Egyptians because we ended up being tourist attractions ourselves. It began, as it always does, with the girls getting a lot of attention and photo requests, but as I moved in to shield Em (because she is just so over it she cannot even) the requests moved on to us. If you decline everyone is very polite, but if you say yes to even one person you get deluged. This was the first time we were around a lot of teenage girls so that meant it was culturally acceptable for me to get in some photos. And so I did. And I loved it. While visiting another site a local man offered his welcome to Joel. He asked where he is from and when Joel replied, “America,” the man gave him another hearty welcome, followed by, “Trump good?” Oy…… After dark we took in Luxor Temple all bathed in the electric light. Night is the best time to see this place as the carvings really come alive with the shadow play. Luxor Temple is home to the Avenue of the Sphinxes (Sphonx?), which we did not have time to walk through in its entirety, but could still sit and enjoy. The next morning we were up at 4:00 a.m. for a sunrise hot air balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings. This was the goal anyway, but since you are at the mercy of the wind, you never know for sure which part of Luxor you’ll be seeing. We were among the lucky and did indeed spend all our air time above the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut and Valley of the Queens. Our afternoon excursion was for a ground tour of the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut plus touring the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Workers. You might think the workers’ tombs would not be so impressive, but they were full of the same wall paintings as the kings’ tombs, only in better shape, if maybe not so elaborate. The theory is that no one bothered plundering the workers’ tombs since they would not have had such fancy grave goods. Anyway, both featured really amazing wall carvings, hieroglyphs, and paintings, but photography is not allowed in any of them. Our final stop of the day was at Habu Temple where we saw a lot more hieroglyphs and large statues. At this point my head was overflowing with history and I’m having trouble recalling enough to share anything accurately, so I’ll just share the rest of photos. And I will add that Luxor is a “must see” if you get to Egypt. And you really should get to Egypt. - Jenni To see the rest of the images from Luxor, click here
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