Luxor - Day 1

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Another early morning…up at 6:30am. I thought this was supposed to be a relaxing vacation. I ate a quick breakfast with my fellow tour participants and disembarked from the ship at 7:30am. We meet up with our tour guide for Luxor, Mohammad, who brings us to the hotel. Ostensibly, we are staying at a 5-Star hotel, but based on the wafer thin mattress and push button TV (you can select between UHF and VHF…and can even manually tune each of the 10 push button channels on the TV)…I am a little skeptical of the rating. Obviously, this is not a 5-Star hotel based on the Michelin (they don’t just make tires) standard. After getting up so early, we are rewarded with the news that we will not start our tour until 3:00pm, since we need to wait for the rest of our tour group, who are still on the felucca.

Horse Carriage

Upon hearing that we had five and a half hours until our formal tour, those of us already in Luxor agreed that we shouldn’t waste the day. I threw my laptop in my backpack and we headed out to explore Luxor (and hopefully find an Internet Café cheaper than the hotel).

We walked about 100 meters and ran into a helpful fellow with a horse who agreed to bring us around town in a horse carriage for an hour for the low price of $3US. We decided to take him up on his offer. The five of us jumped in the carriage.

The first 30 minutes are spent bringing us by Luxor Temple and through a bazaar that real Egyptians go to…this was really cool. Then he “helpfully” stops by a store that sells Papyrus, essence, and other assorted souvenirs. We stayed for 45 minutes or so…I didn’t get anything, but my Taiwanese tour mates got some Papyrus scrolls.
After another 15 minutes of riding, our driver once again “helpfully” stops at another souvenir shop. Lucky for me, I saw an Internet Café next door. I take a cursory look at the souvenir shop and then head next door to the Internet Café in order to finally upload some of my blog entries.

An hour and a half later (and a sheisha pipe and a couple of pairs of earrings later for my tour mates) we are ready to hit the road again and are looking to grab some lunch (which has been conveniently skipped for most days on the tour). The driver first brings us to this hotel restaurant that has a dubious looking buffet for a relatively exorbitant amount of money. We refuse to stay, and ask to be brought down to the waterfront for a Nile side restaurant. We ended up at Maro’s, which had a nice view of the Nile, and had some decent quality food for reasonable prices.

After spending an hour at Maro’s, we are ready to head back to the hotel. The driver approaches the hotel, but sees the Tourist Police, and pulls a U-Turn and heads off to a side street. Being a consultant (and an active listener), I am ready for what the driver says next: He wants $15 (since we have been with him for 5 hours). My follow riders are a little surprised…but seeing the reaction he had to the Tourist Police, we argue that we didn’t ask to be taken to the souvenir shops (plus he got commissions on what we bought) and gave him $10…knowing that he wasn’t going to chase us around the corner to the hotel. Honestly, he was probably pretty ecstatic that he got $10 (plus his commissions on our purchases), his posturing aside.

Karnak Temple

I believe Karnak Temple is home to a memorable scene in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. It’s the one where Jaws chased Bond and a Russian Spy (who is trying to get some microfilm that Bond has) around the temple, hurling stones at them, and tearing up a van. Of course with my memory for names…I could have the movie title and location completely wrong. I suppose I could have looked this up at the Internet Movie Database...but I am too lazy. Now I am just rambling. Good gravy.

For those who don’t place Bond lore higher than actually history, Karnak was the “it” place to worship when Thebes (the old name for Luxor) was the capital of Egypt. It’s got it all: huge columns, pylons, obelisks, statues, and open halls. We just had an hour at the temple, which allowed for only the bare minimum of exploration.

One fact that stood out in my mind was a little mishap the French had when they tried to cleanup the pylons back in the 1800’s. Some of the engineers had a bright idea that a good way to clean the pylons of dirt and salt was to let the Nile flood more than usually, and use this to clean everything. Surely enough, the dirt and salt was washed away, along with most of the pylons.

I would be willing to bet that the baggage handlers who lost my luggage are direct descendants of these engineers. You would figure only having to work 37 hours per week and having 2 months of vacation would result in a higher quality of work, but you would be wrong. And now students are revolting again there. If I wasn’t of French descent, and didn’t like brie so much, I think I would call them American Fries too.

Luxor Temple

Ok, I have to be truthful; the temples are starting to blend together for me at this point. It is going to be tough to sort out the photos from my camera, of which I have over 300 at this point. At one time, Karnak and Luxor Temples were connected by an avenue of sphinxes...which has yet to be excavated. Luxor is much smaller than Karnak, but still has a very rich history. In addition to being a temple during the pharaonic period, it has also been an Army base for the Romans, a Mosque for the Arabs, and a village. Such icons of history as Ramses II, King Tut, and Alexander the Great (who built a shrine that had hieroglyphics of himself as Pharaoh) have all had a hand in expanding Luxor Temple.

The thing that caught my eye here was a portion of the temple that had been plastered over by the Romans and had a painting put on it…only part of which remains today. Some scholars believe it may be a depiction of the last supper, others think it is simple a portrait of Roman emperors and/or Senate.

Sound and Light Show

I had high hopes for this show, based on my experience at Philae (Isis) Temple back in Aswan. The Lonely Planet guide said the show at Karnak Temple was a little melodramatic, but I was figuring I could look past this, since the temple would be lit up beautifully. Whoever did the lighting for Karnak should be shot. This place is in serious need of some help from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. And although melodramatic is one term that could be used for the Sound portion of the show…I think mind-numbingly dull would be a better one. Let’s hope that the Sound and Light Show at the Pyramids in Giza my last night make up for this.

Dinner

While I was enduring the Sound and Light Show, the rest of the group decided to head over to the Mummification Museum. We all agreed to meet at 8:00pm to grab some dinner at a local restaurant frequented by tourists, Amoun. I have been looking for stuffed pigeon for the whole trip (as well as Stella beer, which is supposed to be the best in Egypt, but has been impossible to find so far)…and although Amoun had some, I just wasn’t in the mood for it. I opted for the mixed grill of beef (lamb) kabob, steak, and chicken. It was ok, but I wasn’t all that hungry. One thing that did I did find really well was a dessert called Om Ali, which is a pastry soaked with milk, which also contains nuts. Another thing that the Egyptians do well is fresh juices. I have become addicted to the mango and strawberry juices.

Most of my meal went to the gaggle of cats (I know, gaggle is the term for a group of geese…but I just like the word) that prowled the restaurant looking for food. Although the cats would look at you with sad eyes and gently put their paws on you…once you threw them a piece of meat, they turned into a pack of wild animals…clawing and scratching one another for the food.

Right next door to the restaurant was another Internet cafe, which offered access for 6L.E. per hour…by far the cheapest price we had found so far. After waiting five minutes for my Deloitte e-mail to pull up (it finally timed out), I understood why it was so cheap.

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