Egypt/LuxorThis morning I returned from Luxor on a grueling 10 hour train ride. The train ride to Upper Egypt wasn’t that bad, but the return trip was like being packed into a sardine can filled with concentrated B.O. Other than that, I had a fabulous time in Luxor. Tom kicks ass, and had a room at the Hilton that we all stayed in. So, when we weren’t hiking through the Valley of the Kings in the desert heat, we were relaxing at a nice 4 star hotel. The day we arrived we went straight over to Deir el-Medina, an ancient village for the workers of the Valley of the Kings. There we saw a beautiful temple to Amhes-Nefertari, the wife of Amenhotep I. After that, we went to see the magnificent temple of Amun (and mortuary temple of Ramses III) at Medinet Habu. We then made a quick stop at the Memnon Colossi for a couple of photos, and returned to the hotel to escape the heat. The following day, we unfortunately didn’t really get up early enough to start before it got to hot, but went to Karnak anyways. I will say one thing about Karnak, we were there for like 2 hours and still barely saw maybe half of it. We then went to Luxor temple a couple of kilometers down the road. Unfortunately we got to Luxor temple too late to take any pictures. Then, on the third day, we went to the Valley of the Kings, and went into the tombs of Thutmoses III, Seti II, and Ramses III. Sorry, but pictures are forbidden in the tombs, so all I have to show for it is the signs from outside the tombs. Next we went to Deir el-Bahri where the famous temple of Hatshepsut can be found. Then on day four we returned to Luxor temple and spent the good part of the day there being geeks and reading hieroglyphs and taking pictures. Overall, it was a fantastic spring break, the only downside is that I hurt my knee, so it was a bit difficult with all the walking and stairs…

I took over 300 pictures, so I hope you enjoy them. I will slowly be putting captions on them, just not right away…