Egypt pt 2

The train station was an experience. Everything was written in Arabic, and it was a pain to figure out not only which platform you were supposed to be on, but where that platform actually was. Once you found the platform after being misdirected once or twice (ok, that only happened once…but hauling my big suitcase up and down those stairs was NOT a good time) you had to wait and hope that you could figure out which car you were in. The numbers were all in Arabic. Thank God for nice people willing to help the poor, confused tourists out. The sleeper train was not how I imagined. Much more modern than expected, and I was severely disappointed in the lack of dining car. You ate in your room, with little plastic trays that pulled out from the wall. The food wasn’t too bad though, once I traded Sarah my lamb for her rice. Sarah and I ‘roomed’ together, and Robby was in the room adjacent to ours. There was this little handy door that opened between the two though, and it was kind of like we were eating together. The guy came to pull our beds down (you needed a special tool, we figured out after a half hour of pushing every button and touching everything) and we fell asleep pretty quickly. You all know me, and therefore really don’t need me to tell you that I slept like a baby.
We arrived in Luxor at 7 in the morning (or 8, I don’t know) and the guy from our hotel met us at the stop. He was super nice, probably the nicest person I met in all of Egypt. Well, except Sarah’s friend of course...but he comes in later. Our hotel was a quick 3 minute walk from the station, but we were on the fourth floor and there were no elevators. I can tell you that I didn’t feel guilty at all skipping my nightly workout once while we were there. The manager gave us a few minutes to get settled, then we went upstairs for our ‘welcome drink’ (Hibiscus or regular tea, always choose hibiscus, yum : ) and to give us the low down on Luxor and things to do there. He was wicked sweet, and very understanding of our budget. Here is my shout out…if you ever go to Luxor on a budget, stay at the OASIS hotel. After some chit chat, he arranged for us not only to get student discount cards (which paid for themselves in no time-50% off most entrance fees-and boy is there a lot of those) but to also leave in a few hours for a Falluka (sail boat) trip. We showered and got ready to go. The falluka was one of my favorite things in Egypt. It was fantastically relaxing and low key. We sailed around for a little bit, had some tea, and then took a tour of Banana Island. We saw all sorts of fruit trees and animals, some irrigation techniques, and of course…a baby crocodile. When I say baby I mean it was only about 5 feet long. Then we ate bananas and were back on the water for a fantastic view of the sunset. Once we docked, we tipped the men and were on our way.
I was going to skip right to the next day, but there are some things that can’t be skipped. We were harassed, constantly, everywhere we went. We could not walk down a street without getting yelled at by some vendor, horse and carriage driver, or man. Of course, we did not help the situation by travelling in a group of one guy and two girls…but the harassment was way more than we expected. If I had 5 dollars for every time some Egyptian guy yelled ‘Casanova (to Robby), lucky man, you have two wives, give one to me’ then this trip would be paid for in full. Taxi and carriage drivers would also stop traffic, following slowly behind you for 5 minutes asking if you wanted a ride…even if you had already said no 1000 times. We are used to staring, used to getting unwanted attention (we do live in a foreign country and stand out quite a lot most of the time) but man, it got on our nerves after awhile. Walking down the streets was probably the most stressful part of the trip. Oh, and the cheesy pickup lines were abundant. The best of the trip: ‘I think you dropped something, it was my heart’. Oh yea, the Egyptian men had game.
After walking home (and being denied entrance to Luxor temple because we didn’t have small bills) we ended up just chilling out and reading on the roof, which was beautiful. It is where we ate breakfast every morning, and spent at least an hour or two there later on in the night. There were cushions spread out on the ground, and a nice canopy for sitting under during the day. The next morning was an early one; we hopped on a tour bus at 8am to head to West Bank to see the Valley of the Kings and Queens.
Valley of the Kings was the first, and most impressive, stop. We had a great guide and went into 3 tombs; Ramses I, Ramses III, and Ramses IV. Each of the tombs had their own ‘story’. The first was empty, except for the actual stone ‘tomb’ part, because it was too heavy for robbers to steal (like they did everything else). The second had immaculate paintings on the wall (including hieroglyphics and incredible colors) and it is also famous because it is the tomb that covered King Tut’s, effectively hiding it from tomb robbers. The third was known for being crooked. The engineers started digging it and halfway through ran into an older tomb, and then had to start digging at an angle to finish. Whoops. The Valley of the Queens was cool because of the stories. We were told about the insane amount of inbreeding that occurred. Kings married their daughters, Grandfathers their granddaughters, and so on. One king married his sister, had 100 kids, and 54 of them died of genetic defects. There was also a lot of murdering for power. One second wife poisoned the current king and his 4 children who were in line to take the throne before her son. Of course, she got away with it, because her son was then King. Oh and then the first wife was so sad about the deaths that she miscarried her 6 month fetus, and they mummified it (you can see it in the tombs). It could really be a soap opera.
The temple of Hasteput (I think that is it?) had the best story of all though. This woman had married her brother (see Inbreeding above) and didn’t have any children with him. When her dad died, she was the only child of the queen and had to marry her half brother to continue the line. Well, when he died, she was left to rule in place of her step son (who her brother had with his other wife) until he was old enough to take power. Well, she ruled. She took to power well, and to assert her legitimacy as ‘King of Egypt’ she began to dress like a man and wear false beards. She never did hand over the reign to her step son, and ruled until the day she died. When she was alive she had a large temple built for herself in the Valley of the Kings (of course, she is a King, so why should her tomb be in the Valley of the Queens?) and killed the architect who built it so he wouldn’t build a better one for a later King or Queen. After her death, her step son finally came to power, and destroyed everything she ever built. I would call that one heck of a hissy fit. It was only a few years ago (10 or 15) that the temple was restored and completely rebuilt.
After the temple we made our way to the Colossi of Memnon, of course with a quick pit stop to an alabaster store. The Colossi were cool, but couldn’t hold a light to everything else that we had seen that day. We took a quick hangist (relax time) on the roof before heading to Luxor Temple, this time with smaller bills. Like everything else in Luxor (besides our beloved roof) it was packed with tourists, but for sure still worth seeing as it was lit up for the night. Rumor has it that the current Luxor was actually built on top of the temple, and when it was discovered they moved everything out of the way and excavated it. Everything but a mosque that the people refused to let them touch. The mosque now sites on top of one piece of the temple. Not too much else to say about the temple, pictures are amazing though. Oh, and that night we walked to the British Pub, and ate some amazing fish and chips.
The next day was set aside for the East Side of Luxor. We came downstairs after breakfast and asked the same nice manager about renting bikes for the day. He brought 3 over and I took a quick ride down the street and was ready to go. Sadly though, Robby needed some practice. At one point, Sarah even ran behind him holding him steady as the hotel manager, street vendors, and I laughed. I was in tears, it was hilarious, but it was decided that the bikes were probably not a good plan. We, rather stupidly looking back, decided to save money and walk to Karnak Temple (about 2 miles away from our hotel). While two miles isn’t very long…it becomes quite horrific when you are walking in the middle of the day in the heat of Egypt. We were all heat drunk by the time we got there, and while I remember it being quite beautiful, I don’t remember much other than the fact that there was an A/C’d visitor’s center right next to it. The whole experience wore us out, and I couldn’t tell you what we did for the whole rest of the night.