Left With More Questions Than Answers...

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We were excited when we went down for breakfast and saw that with our usual bread roll with jam was also a hard-boiled egg and some sort of bean thing! We had breakfast and then left our bags in the lobby where they would sit all day...
We had a guide, who had a script that he knew well but he couldn't answer questions if we had any because he didn't really know the history and at times it was hard to hear him over the crowds of people but it was still nice having someone who knew at least a tiny bit of what we were looking at. We headed off to Valley of The Kings first. We were in a group of close to 20. Valley of the Kings is still being excavated and so not all the tombs are always open. While we were there only 5 were open. Only 3 of those 5 were included in our entrance ticket. We could also pay extra to go into Tutankhamen’s tomb. His mummy is still in the tomb but nothing else is because it is all in the Cairo museum now. We decided not to do it because it was another 100 Egyptian Pounds (about $20) and our Egyptian adventure was beginning to be a bit more expensive than we had originally planned for plus we were planning on going into the mummy section at the museum later. Our group decided on Ramses IV, VII, and IX(9) as the 3 tombs we would go into. Ramses IV's tomb was the second tomb found in Valley of the Kings. It is really big! It was the largest of the 3 that we went into there. Ramses VII's tomb had the best color preservation. It was truly amazing how vibrant the blues, reds, and yellows still were. Unfortunately we are not allowed to take photos, but it is said that the flash of cameras fades the color faster so it is understandable. Ramses IX's tomb was the deepest one we went into. We went down a long passageway of stairs (sorry I can't remember how deep they said it was). The tomb itself at the bottom was fairly small but it seemed to be a popular one with the tourists because we had to wait in line for a while for this one. After we left Valley of the Kings our group was taken to a stone carving shop... They showed us the different types of stone found in Egypt that they use for carvings, how to tell the difference between fake and real ones and then of course we were taken into their shop.
After that we were taken to Queen Hatshepsut Temple. I’m glad that we were seeing this one in the winter. There is no shade and even for us it was warm out there! It is a large temple that is 3 levels. The bottom is roped off and so the crowds take a large staircase up to the second level, and then another smaller one up to the top/third level. It is pretty big and a neat site to see but you don't need long to walk around it. Then we drove to Colossi of Memnon. All that is left of this (used to be a temple) is 2 large statues. The statues used to be the entrance to the temple but the temple was destroyed by flooding and earthquakes.
Then we were dropped back off at the hotel to fend for ourselves for lunch. A group of us decided to walk around town a bit and look for something. We tried to eat at a place that smelled good and found, for the first time since being in Egypt, that they did not want to help us, or at least that is what it seemed like. After walking around for a while we headed back to the hotel to eat in their restaurant... The waiter wanted us to order the lunch special which was 25 Egyptian pounds and was chicken and rice and salad(sliced tomato). Alex and I didn't want chicken and so we asked for a menu. The waiter kept saying that there was no menu because they changed it every day. We of course knew there was one because we had asked to look at it the night before when we were trying to decide if we wanted dinner or to just go to bed, we opted for bed. Anyways we spent like 15 min arguing with him about the menu and then went up to our room and found the one the front desk had given us the night before. (** Side note I put pictures of the menu on the previous blog the spelling is great for a laugh if you have not looked at those yet!**) The waiter was shocked! I don't think he had ever seen it before! Him and the whole staff stood with it and looked as though they were studying it after we ordered and gave it back to them. Alex and I ordered a cheese sandwich.... Should be easy you would think but our cheese sandwiches (which was the breakfast bread rolls, with the laughing cow type cheese, and sliced tomato) took longer to make than the large chicken meal that the other people we were with had! They were done eating by the time we got our sandwiches, we think they had to go to the store to get things to make them!
At 3pm we were picked back up and taken to Karnak Temple. It is worth going to! We were beginning to feel that once you see one you see them all because there is No information anywhere about anything you go to look at anywhere in Egypt! Yes, the temples are amazing but you walk around and they all have the hieroglyphics but you have no idea what you’re looking at, what they mean, so they all start to look the same. Anyways, we decided we would do Karnak as our last one and I’m glad we did decide to do it because it is the largest one that we went to! It is Massive, there was even a little lake built there for it. There is also a large stone scarab on a pedestal that if you walk around it counterclockwise 3 times it brings marriage into your life, 5 times to bring kids, and 7 times for good luck. There was a crowd and Alex and I opted out of the circling because even though the good luck sounded nice we didn't want to chance the kids! We walked around for quite a while. As the sun was setting we left Karnak and our group headed to Luxor temple. Alex, Stacy and I decided not to go in, and instead walked around the large square just outside it. After that we were dropped back off at the hotel in Luxor where we got our bags and waited in the lobby till it was time to go to the night train. We did go back into the restaurant for a cup of tea and the waiter seemed so excited to see us (although I’m not sure why when we had caused so much problems earlier!) and Stacy asked for a menu and the waiter got super excited and said "yes of course!" and went and got it! He had made photo copies! It was so funny, we laughed about it for a while!
The train ride back up was a lot better for me. This time we were in a 6 person cabin. 2 other girls were with us that had been doing the tours with us that day. I got to sit next to a window and then rested my legs on my bag. There was a lot more room and it was a lot warmer too so I actually got some sleep this time!
When we got to Cairo we headed back to the American House hostel to drop off our bags. Then we walked to the Cairo Museum. We were all really excited to go. The guides and everyone were always saying everything is now in the Cairo Museum, and it is, and we were looking forward to being able to read all the history about everything we had been to see and have it all come together.... Unfortunately it was a Huge disappointment for all of us.
When you get there you go through a metal detector and put your bag through a scanner. I beeped and realized that I had my camera in my pocket, I pulled it out and showed the guard that was why I beeped. He let me through. Then your ticket is torn and someone looks into you bags. No problem, we get through. Then right in the main entrance you stick your bags through another scanner and walk through a metal detector... as I was going to pick up my bag a guy grabbed it from me, I didn't realize at first that he was a security guy so I started to pull it away from him. He said "you have camera" I looked at him like yes but didn't say anything. He dug through my bag and pulled out my little digital camera and said I could not take it in...... Seriously? Is what I was thinking, I just showed it to one of the guards why didn’t he say something! Grrrrrrr anyways I had to take it back out the front gate and check it in. Then I went back through it all to get back in. After that I was slightly irritated. We started walking around and soon came to the conclusion that it was more of a large storage facility than a museum. It looks like they have just piled as much stuff in there as they possibly can. There were things everywhere, cases of things facing the walls, things you couldn't walk around to see cause it was piled behind other things. Nothing seemed to be that organized or secure, the old locks on cases were rusted and would probably break easily, we didn't notice any cameras, nothing seemed to be dusted and worst of all, THERE WAS NO INFORMATION ON ANYTHING!!! You walk around and look at a bunch of stuff piled everywhere and every once in a while you see something and you stop to look at it and wonder, what tomb did this come from, who was if for, what is it made out of, how old is it, what does it mean/say? None of us were really sure why we were surprised after our experiences from our trip so far we shouldn’t have been. We walked around quite a bit of it but not all. We decided to skip the Mummy area that we could see through a glass wall and was similar no information as far as we could see and it cost another 100 to walk through. We left the Cairo Museum with more questions than answers and walked to our favorite Koshary place for dinner. Afterwards we went for tea and tried Lemon Shisha before calling it a night.
Ready to be done with Egypt we all went to bed and prepared for an early morning bus ride to the desert the next day.

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