Final Egypt Post

All right, to finish off the longest post train in my life, here it is.

We spent another day in Luxor. I might have mentioned, but we really liked Luxor.

Paty and I at one of the two temples that are in Luxor itself.

This temple had a light show at night that most of the tour group attended. We skipped that one, but I heard it was full of lights.

The size of these temples and the statues is hard to convey on the blog, but you can tell how large the statue is when you see Paty and I don't even come up to it's knee.

The last day in Luxor we toured the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. This is where they found King Tut's tomb. King Tut was not unique in any way as a Pharaoh except that his treasure or 'loot' was hid the best. All of the other tombs were plundered throughout the millennium except for King Tut. If he had a 110 Kg (242 lbs) solid gold sarcophagus, you wonder what some of these other Pharaohs had in their tombs.

Now the Valley of the Kings is different in that they buried and hid all the tomb entrances. This was the last set of Pharaohs that had super extravagant tombs and the valley was the burial place for the Pharaohs from the 16th - 11th century BC. They realized that building a pyramid was great and impressive, but it was also a beacon for generations of tomb robbers.

Here is a picture of Paty in the center of the valley:

There are tombs all over this valley. Some 65 Pharaohs are interred here and various other sons and favorite servants make up over 130 tombs known in the valley. They are still discovering them today. As a matter of fact we heard that they had discovered a new tomb about a year before our visit, but it was only announced 'officially' last week.

Unfortunately you could not take pictures inside the tombs, but you could explore three tombs of your choice. About 10 were open for touring. Inside the tombs was really cool as the original painting and hieroglyphs were still vivid and vibrantly colorful even though the paintings were between 3000 and 3500 years old!

The tombs were hidden all over this valley, to get to this one we had to climb up these stairs, go over another hill and then once in the tomb go down at least 100 vertical feet via stairs meant for ancient Egyptians or people 5 feet tall. Perfect for Paty!

This temple is between the valley of the Kings and Queens and is dedicated and made by a famous queen that acted like she was a Pharaoh:

All the temples, pyramids and assorted monuments have been restored. At each site, the Egyptians have typically partnered up with some other country or institution to help in this restoration. Typically some American University or France, England or another what you would consider a Western country. Well this temple was restored in partnership with my friends:

That was for all those Sobolewski's reading the blog.

Me and the famous large statues:


After a long hard day exploring Ancient Egypt, it is always good to relax with a Sheesha:

The other two people in the photo are Lisa and Malcolm. Part of our tour group. Speaking of the group, it was a really fun group. I can see how this trip could be a real downer unless you had a good group and a good guide that keeps things rolling. Lisa was 23ish and from Australia. She had been living in England working at pubs and a few other jobs for the last few years. Picture a cross between Melita and Keri Baker and you would be dead on. While on holiday she heard the she got admitted to 'Uni' and her next 4 years are now committed to college. Very exciting for her. Malcolm is the New Zealand guy that was also living in London. But he was heading home to New Zealand to renew his visa. And architect. Both were adventurous enough to do this trip alone and also were the only two to do the Felucca ride instead of the cruise ship.

Also in the group were a Scandinavian couple that had retired to Southern France. A few pictures on this blog should be accredited to Leif, he was a picture taking machine.

Next we had Mr and Mrs Mohamed. A Pakistan couple from England. About 15 times they were asked if they were Indian, a negative. I bet that this happens a lot to people from Pakistan. Mrs. Mohamed was the 'designated negotiator' of the group. Since we had to negotiate for EVERYTHING, this was crucial. On a side note, ask me in person about the EVERYTHING reference and you can hear my story about negotiating for 'feminine products' at what amounts to a 7-11. Talk about negotiating from a position of weakness. Having Paty sit there looking anxious at the only store for a two mile radius......

The next couple was from Boston, kind of. Tom and Jillian. They had retired from working at a moratorium or crematorium and bought a general store/post office in something called the 'Lake's District' of England. She is English and he American, our only countryman. Or at least my countryman as Paty NEEDS to tell everyone that she is from Mexico. Their choice to sell everything, and buy a place in England sight unseen is very intriguing to me. Sounds like a great adventure! Definitely a lifestyle choice to say the least.

Lastly we had a family of four from England. Sally, who you met earlier in this post train because Paty bogarted her 40th Birthday celebration. Stuart is Sally's hubby. And they brought along their two kids, aged 10 and 12. The kids really lightened up the group, they kept it loud and exciting. You haven't lived until you heard a ten year old with a heavy English accent CONSTANTLY yell out 'LUCY' every time we needed to go somewhere.

What is this you are asking, well let's just say that our Australian friend being 23, single and Aussie was a magnet (sucker?) for the omnipresent touts trying to sell us anything and everything you can imagine. Lucy seemed to have a hard time saying NO. The whole Aussie friendly aura just exuded from her.

All in all it was a great group. I don't know if any of you are reading, but we enjoyed it immensely.

Next post, either Venice or something to do with the fact that I think Paty might have conveniently 'lost' one of my favorite shirts which just so happens to be her least favorite shirt.