Valley of the Kings

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Day 6 - Valley of the Kings

After our first night on the cruise boat we got to experience another shower in the smallest showers ever. We are still in amazement that some of the larger Italians showered the entire time as there is not way they would fit in the showers. We got off the boat and headed to the West Bank of the Nile in Luxor and toured the Valley of the Kings. There were 62 tombs, 10 were open for viewing and we saw three. No pictures/videos were allowed to be taken inside the tombs. Again the construction and the designs were amazing. There was only one queen who had a temple build so we stopped and saw Queen Hatshepsut’s Temple. She had an awful step son who had here killed so he could rule and then he defaced everything that honored her. I’m telling you, “time-outs” just don’t work with young kids today.
We returned to the ship by noon and we set sail at 12:30. We hung out by the pool and good news for Kirsten and Chester. They actually were not the fattest girls on the trip. A whole bunch of Italians were also on board the cruise and they love their pasta. After a few hours under the intense heat, the 4 non-blondes retired to our lovely cabins. The accommodations were fine and we all settled in for a nap. About an hour into our nap the boat approached the Esna Locks. We knew this because out of no where we heard voices yelling our favorite greeting: “A-llo!!” (This we believe is the Egyptian way to say Hello when you don’t know or speak English) Mind you, we are traveling on the Nile, and literally outside our cabin’s sliding glass door, are at least 50 small row boats paddling like mad to get to all of the river boats lined up to pass through the lock. They are all waving shirts, dresses, blankets and scarves. They are shouting greetings in German, Italian and Spanish, anything to get your attention. These men paddle up to the boats and throw their own tow ropes around the river boats and hang on trying to sell stuff. They even throw their stuff all the way up to the top deck where the pool is. They have to toss that stuff up 4 ½ boat floors. These guys are relentless. They just keep throwing crap up on the top deck. Then the tourists look at it and throw it back and it generally lands in the water because none of us are as good a throw as these guys. It was absolutely crazy. After they have failed at selling stuff to the boat, they unhook themselves from one boat and then attach themselves to a different boat that has just passed through the lock heading back up river. We’re sure this repeats itself several times a day every day.
We did kill some time waiting to go through the locks watching children doing all star wrestling off the walls as seeing what a cart and donkey could hold. One had a small refrigerator on the cart.

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