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Published: April 23rd 2013
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Luxor for me was a city of highs and lows. We started out our second day in the city by riding donkeys from the river to the Valley of the Kings. It was a neat way to get from point A to point B. The donkeys were cute and a bit sassy as donkeys tend to be. Mine was fairly well behaved and obedient for the most part. It had a tendency to follow the other donkeys very closely so I had to keep pulling it back to give the others some space. Eventually though, I kind of stopped caring and let it do what it wanted. What it wanted was to bite one of the other donkeys on the ass! We were following one of the other girls fairly closely and all of a sudden my donkey stretches forward and takes a big chomp right out of her donkeys flank! And is promptly kicked in the face by her little beast. I had to laugh, it was funny. My donkey was upset, but what was he thinking? He had to know there would be some retaliation. What a cute dumb animal. The other girl did not think it was so
funny. I don't think she had much experience with animals so maybe it scared her a little bit. She told me in her stern Russian accent to keep my donkey away from hers, and periodically checked behind her to make sure I was keeping my beast in line. Haha. Its three weeks later and I'm still chuckling about it.
The Valley of the Kings was interesting. It was getting very hot when we got there, and it was still early in the morning. It was nice to go down into the tombs just to escape the heat. This site actually had a few more tourists wandering around so I was just as happy to leave as I was to get there. My favorite part of this site was the vibrancy of the colours in the tombs. The paintings and heiroglyphs were spectacular again. It amazes me how well preserved they are after so many years have passed since they were initially painted, not just here but everywhere in Egypt.
We also visited the temple of Hatshepsut. Here I enjoyed the story of Hatshepsut. Women in politics, or in this case as a ruler, always interest me. I like
mom
On the rooftop of our Luxor hotel stories of strong women, however hers did not end well! Its too bad because she mainted peaceful and prosperous relationships with neighbouring countries for a long time before her son came back from exile and wrested power from her. This story is how our guide told it to us, but it isn't the same as how wikipedia tells it. Either way, as far as stories go it was good!
The heat was definitely getting to me by this point in the day. It reached 42 degrees that afternoon...which is way too hot for me. I had a bit of heat stroke and felt pretty ill while we were touring the temple. Luckily this was our last outdoor activity for the day. We headed from the temple to have lunch with another local family. They had kids and the guys had fun playing soccer with their boys. We had some beaded necklaces that were given to us at an alabaster shop so we gave them to the girls. They broke almost immediately and beads went spilling everywhere. One of the girls in our group helped them restring the beads making new necklaces with what was left of the thread. Again the food was amazing. I think our best meals were the ones at the local homes.
The afternoon was spent relaxing in a cafe drinking tea and for some smoking sheesha. We went for supper and had the misfortune of being pick-pocketed on our way to the restaurant! My mom was target and the guy got away with her camera. We intervened when he wouldn't leave her alone and he took off on a bike. Luckily that was the only thing he managed to get. We didn't even realize anything was missing until afterwards, but by that time it was too late to do anything about it. When we met up with another girl from our group later she said that the same guy had tried to steal from her earlier. Luckily she had nothing in her pockets so he came up empty handed that time. We left Luxor that evening on the sleeper train back to Cairo and the incident left a sour taste in my mouth. Theft upsets me and makes me angry. I work in retail, so you would think that it wouldn't bother me anymore but it always does. I don't understand why people steal, or why people take advantage of others. That is another rant altogether though, and I won't dwell on it here.
In Cairo we were back to being happy, and that is where I will pick up again in my next entry!
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