The first day in Luxor

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Today, we awoke heinously early, in order to catch our 7:45 flight from Cairo to Luxor. In case you don’t know what heinously early is, that is 5:45. In the morning. We left for the airport, and arrived early enough to have to wait an hour and a half for the flight. In that time, we had breakfast, and chatted about our lives, and, invariably, politics. The flight itself was fine, the part of it I was awake. I had the window seat, but all there was to see was desert and more desert.

We arrived in Luxor, and took a taxi to the hotel. From the drive, and from later explorations, we decided that Luxor is indeed much nicer than Cairo. For one, it is far greener, and has much more agriculture. Secondly, the Nile just plain looks better here. We checked into our hotel, and had a cup of coffee, being able to catch the tail end of breakfast. Then, we started out on our official day.

The first thing we went to see was the Luxor Temple. The Temple was built 3,500 years ago by the ancient Egyptians. A good portion of it is destroyed now, but there is still enough of it to see that it must have been very impressive in its day. There were large pillars and huge stone statues everywhere. Dad and I looked around there quite a bit, then retired to the hotel for some R&R. We went up and relaxed by the FREEZING pool. First we were sunbathing, but when that got too hot, we ended up putting our feet into the water. Dad didn’t, but I ended up going all the way in, and messing around in the water, doing back flips and such, for a while. Despite the fact that it was so cold I was the only one in the pool, it was still fun.

After that, we went to see the Karnack Temple. This temple was even more impressive than the Luxor Temple. It has a total of 134 HUGE pillars, meant to represent papyrus flowers. It also has a couple giant obelisks, and the obligatory statues and walls. We wandered around there for a while, then headed back to the hotel. Luna had lots of fun there too. She has agreed to write a post soon, about her adventures so far. Dad and I had dinner on the hotel roof, next to the pool, where I tried a non-alcoholic cocktail called a Florida. A Florida is apparently orange juice, mango juice, guava juice, grenadine, and grapefruit juice. It was quite good, but rather expensive. Aside from that, Dad and I wandered around town, where we were hit up for sales by several shop owners, and Dad bought a souvenir hat. All and all, a good day. Tomorrow, we will visit the Valley of the Kings.

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