Our Last Temples then Hello Sharm El Sheikh

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Today we are saying goodbye to our floating home, it’s been really nice. One of the best things (apart from the great food, service, facilities…) is that you don’t tip anyone until you check out and then you put one large tip that is split over everyone. We haven’t bought much in the way of souveniers and yet we have not much Egyptian cash left because we’ve spent heaps just on tips. Everyone has their hand out, understandably people aren’t paid much so they try and get extra where they can. It just gets frustrating when no-one does anything just to be nice.

KARNAK TEMPLE

We go first to see Karnak Temple and this is also right near where we went last night to see Salem’s parents.

This is largest of all the temples and also where you get to see the vanity that existed in the world even 4,000 years ago!

The Queen Hat-ship-suit has some columns here that her son in anger smashed to the ground but when he saw the symbol of one of the God’s on another, he didn’t want to smash it so he built a wall around it to hide it from view.

The whole place is enormous with more than 120 perfectly placed columns, a lake and large open areas that the common people would have used.

LUXOR TEMPLE

This temple was directly across the road from where our boat was moored, it looked huge then, but to walk through it was something else. Again very large, with lots of columns, large open areas for the common folk, more damage by the Christians, and also renovations were being done to preserve the carvings.

There was a standout difference with what the Christians had done to this temple though. This time they had actually put a layer of mud over the inscriptions and then painted pictures on top. There were a few areas where the mud hadn’t fallen off and the colour was really bright. There was also a lot of smoke damage in here as well.

STILL DISCOVERING

There are still excavations going on throughout Luxor finding more and more things buried beneath the town. In fact, there is probably an entire city underneath. They have uncovered what they are calling ‘Sphinx Avenue’. Its 2 perfectly straight rows of Sphinxs’ facing towards each other. This avenue joins Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple. Now days they use instruments that can see if anything is under the ground, so they can dig exactly where they need to. Or as explained to us, only pull down buildings that need to. For Sphinx Avenue they had to pull down the back of a Christian Church, we did wonder if they would have pulled down a Mosque…

TIME TO FILL BEFORE FLYING TO SHARM EL SHEIKH

As it’s only lunch time and we don’t fly out until 7pm we are put up for the day in a hotel. It has everything we need including free internet so it’s a great time to load up as many of the blogs as I can while Tim naps! A productive afternoon I thought! We have lunch in their rooftop café. It’s a great view of the Nile and the main street.

A standout difference that we can see from up here compared to Cairo is its so much cleaner, there is nowhere the amount of thrown litter, but also they don’t have anywhere the population. Its also a lot greener with bougainvillea lining the roadsides.

Just before we are due to be picked up we learn of Tim’s Pop passing. It’s a very sad time and we’re glad that we are in the quietness of the hotel for a while. It’s heartbreaking to see Tim so upset and not being able to help. Tim’s Pop was a wonderful man and Tim has so many great memories of him.

We are collected at 5pm and it’s a solemn trip to the airport. The guide has put dance music on and when he learns what happened he changes it to some nice quiet mellow music, very thoughtful.

We are checked straight through to Sharm El Sheikh, normally we insist on collecting our luggage when we have connecting flights as we feel like we have kept track of it and we stand less chance of it going astray, but this time we just let them check it through.

We go by bus to the plane and it’s small! We are row 26 so figure we must be right at the back, but no, in the plane the rows start at 21 - where are the first 20 rows!!! Our next flight we are row 36 so now we figure they are probably going to be the same size plane!!

OUR FIRST MISSING BAG!!

We don’t have much time at Cairo in between flights so we head straight to the gate. It’s another case of catching a bus to the plane (we even joke that we will end up back on the plane we just got off…), but there are 2 more flights leaving from the same gate so we end up having a bit more time than first thought. It seems the ‘go to your boarding gate’ announcements you hear are automated and not done in real time.

We get to Sharm El Sheikh at about 10:30pm and again we are waiting for Tim’s bag, it nearly always comes out last. So we wait and wait and wait…

It’s a no show!

By now, Tim’s starting to come down with a migraine. So he tells our waiting guide and driver what’s happened and I sort out the missing bag. Unlike in Australia they don’t deliver the bag to you when it arrives, they expect you to return to the airport to collect it. He says it will be on the next flight from Cairo and will be here at 12:30am, perhaps we can wait - perhaps not! With much pleading I manage to convince the guy to have it delivered to our hotel.

Driving to our hotel, it is so obvious Sharm El Sheikh is like no other place in Egypt that we have been to. Even though its really late, the whole place has a party atmosphere to it and there hundreds of people everywhere. People are dressed more conventionally (conventional to us, not Egypt), girls in short dresses, guys just wearing tank tops. As we were flying over I said to Tim that it looks really sparkly, on the ground you can see why. It’s like an Egyptian Las Vegas, well how I picture Las Vegas to be anyway. Casinos, flashing lights, big hotels…

We end up getting to the hotel at midnight and the bag arrives at 3am. The guy who I dealt with about it actually brought it himself, so that was really nice of him.

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