Royal House Hotel Luxor

... Egypt and they had stayed for a period of three years in the church of St Sergio's which was built in old Cairo. People from allover the world come to this Church for the purpose of visit and bless. This era left several great things such as The Hanging Church. No sooner this era had finished. The Islamic civilization had been established by (Amr Ibn El-Aas) who had conquest Egypt and ...

... hotels for the night. We had a bit of a scare because our guide wasnt there to meet us, we rang our tour operator a couple of times and he kept saying that she was coming but we werent sure and thought we might have been riped off. She finally arrived about an hour and a half later and we set off to our hotel. The drivers over there are even more crazy than the ones in Italy, they all drive with no headlights on and toot everyone as they are driving past or overtaking ...

... which I was able to read only the title and the lead of on Kristen's blackberry. After Khalid told me about everyone's excitement to see Obama, the NYTimes article argued that Obama was likely to not be well received in a country where people were suffering at the hands of the Authoritarian state. Of course that made me think about the unique perspective of Khalid. Khalid cannot in his right mind support a "fight" that could occur if those still angry at Israel ...

... found), Karnak temple...The first day was spent more or less catching up on stuff in our hotel, laundry, browsing the area for fun...our hotel has a terrasse which overlooks the Nile and the entire city, was really cool to eat up there before going to the Karnak Sound and Light Show. Its basically this 1973 (give or take a few years) pre-recorded guide through the temple at night with lights on the monuments on queue with cheesy Indiana Jones sound effects...yeah its ...

... completely carved with heiroglyphics, some of which still had the paint on them after 4500 years in the sun. The next is the Hypostyle, another courtyard which had been covered and rose to oaver 100 feet in the center. The pillars were built in 6 foot sections and stacked upon eachother by filling the courtyard with sand as they went. Once the pillars were to their final height, the sand was removed and th carvings and heiroglyphics were added on the way down. Today 5000 ...

... of the temple was buried under sand. I've got some good photos from here. Rest of the day in Luxor We did a tour of Luxor, previously the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, on the banks of the Nile River. We decided not to go inside Luxor Temple (and its many columns) as we already visited two others today, instead wandering through the markets and having a group dinner. 10 years ago today was my Bar Mitzvah, when I read the Ten ...

... Egyptian gods. <br><br><br><br> We had a fairly sub par dinner, skipped the belly dancing, and called it a night knowing we had an early morning wake up to check out the West Bank and the Valley of the Queens and Valley of the Kings.<br><br> That morning we left our cruise boat and hopped on a smaller boat to ferry across the Nile. We hopped in a minibus with Mohammed and made our way into the mountains just to the West of the River. We passed by the Colossi of Memnon which are ...

... along the banks waved and shouted to us (hello, hello, hello, hello! Etc.), and at Esna, at the one lock through which we came, which took about 45 minutes due to the line of boats in front of us (Ahmed told us there are about 250 cruise boats on the Nile!), a group of boys was yelling incessantly for baksheesh. When a Spanish tourist threw a few coins, the boys fought each other for them quite ...