Albatros Floating Hotel Luxor

... top, covered in Bob Marley flags and stickers and post cards, hamicks, and beds, and pillows and blankets all over the floor bedouin style, so relaxing. We layed up on the roof for a while eating fresh fruit and listening to the prayer time muslim chants throughout the whole city, really nice.

Woke up this morning at 5 to 7 and took a cab to the Luxor bus station to catch a bus to Hurghada. Of course the bus didn't come! we waited for an hour and a half ...

... too much.

At least it is a dry heat, and not humid like other areas of the world I have visited - and so we are still getting out and seeing Egypt. For some reason we included a visit to the hottest place in Egypt, the temple of Hepshepsut in Luxor.

... then gave it back to him. It was annoying.

I should have pulled a Vince Vaughn from Wedding Crashers when the gay brother paints him in the nude and gives him the painting as a gift. When they get thrown out of the house the brother demands it back but Vaughn goes, "No, you can't have that back, it was a gift" and walks off with the ridiculous painting that the gay brother famously describes as "Sexual and violent!" I should have used the term "Em shee" which ...

... huge columns and statues that are covered with carvings and hieroglyphs. Karnaks columns are the tallest in egypt. Karnak also has "the world's first excel sheet" and 2 obelisks - one is froma set of four - one in Egypt, one in London, one in Paris, and one in New York City. I've now seen three of the four. The other obelisk is one of a pair originally constructed by Hatshepsut, but one fell in an earthquake. That one is still standing because Thuthmosis III ...

... 10mins our bus arrived out of nowhere, chucked the bags on the roof of the bus all jumped in and we were off on our 3.5hr drive to Luxor.

We arrived in Luxor, checked into the hotel, dumped our stuff and then was back on the bus to Karnak Temple. OMG what an amazing temple it was huge!!!! The biggest temple in the kingdom, this was were the Pharohs and Priests and people roamed and also where alot of the obleisks around europe are nicked from. We had a guided tour ...

... temple 100 feet higher and 80 feet back from its original location.  Every piece was put back in place as the way it was found back in the 1800's, and then having a mountain façade built around the structures.   Though pictures are not allowed, I was able to take a few within the two temples thanks to Baksheesh (tipping) of the guards, thus you will find those photos in the photo album.    After our flight back to Aswan, we went to the high dam, which is the largest power ...

... answer unless one said it very crossly in Arabic.  Even shops with notices saying "no hassling" hassled you to go in not to be hassled.  It was really very wearing and made leisurely window shopping or just watching the World go by impossible.  Even more infuriating, round every corner in the ancient sites were the little men with the crocodile smiles and cries of "welcome" who offered little favours ("take your photograph"; "see there is a nice photo") that were ...

... en pleine ville. La lumière se charge de couleur orangée et plonge horizontalement dans le temple. Un obélisque fait face au pilonne du temple, cet obélisque nous le connaissons bien car son jumeau trône sur la place de la Concorde, cadeau du vice-roi d'Egypte Mohammed Ali à Champollion pour le remercier de ses travaux de transcription des hiéroglyphes et pour s’attirer les bonnes grâces de la France et de son roi Charles X.

... us to get fake Student ID cards. Most of the attractions and entrance fees in Egypt offer half price discounts to students so we took him up on his offer and trawled through the streets to his friend at the card issuing office. It is around 10pm by this time but they are still open and we head in and smoke cigarettes and chat with the office manager before he finally gets around to making the cards. The form we were ...