Temples Galore

Next to an owl and a weird guy in blue shorts

The felucca crew woke us up at 6am so that we could pack up our things, eat breakfast and cross the river to disembark (is that the right word for boats?) the boat and board the bus to take us to some temples. Our bags had been stored in the bottom of the boat the whole time and if we ever needed anything out of them we had to climb down into the boat and snake our way through everyone’s luggage to our bags to retrieve our wanted items. I brought a larger bag for this two week trip than I took with me when I was gone for six weeks and opening and closing the bag in the tight confines under the boat was quite challenging. After several trips below deck I stopped putting my stuff back in my bag and just piled it near my bag. Luckily when all bags were retrieved I was able to locate all of my stuff and cram it back into my suitcase.

I will be honest and say that I cannot recall the name of the temples that we visited on the way to the hotel, we went to two of them. Neither of them were all that spectacular and everyone in the group was ready for a hot shower and some relaxing by the pool. As a result we rushed through both temples as quickly as possible. At this point the temples are starting to be like cathedrals and castles in Europe, they are really cool at first but then most of them look the same they are only different in size, colors and location.

We finished our journey to Luxor and checked into the hotel which is really nice. The hotel backs up to the Nile and has a large pool and several restaurants. My room is huge and has a smaller room coming off of it that is a luggage room. Yes, I am serious my hotel room has its own luggage room that is as big as some of the rooms I stayed in with 9 other people while traveling elsewhere in the world. This sure is the life of luxury!

After checking in to the awesome room we went down by the pool to relax, soak up some sun, eat lunch and go for a swim. For dinner we were taken to a nearby restaurant that had a buffet of food. I really like buffets in foreign countries because it lets me sample lots of local cuisine and there is always something that I can find that I like to eat. There was also a jeweler at the restaurant that was brought in so that we could buy jewelry from him and know that the stuff is quality. Again I think this is a way that the tour group makes more money by getting a percentage of the jeweler’s sales, but that’s just the skeptic in me talking. I was exhausted and ready to get back to the hotel to sleep but several people from the group were still looking at the jewelry. This is another problem with groups, waiting for other people to get to places and not being able to move on until everyone is ready. Tomorrow we are going to the Valley of the Kings and I am really excited!

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