Luxor

After Edfu, we continued on to Luxor. Our hotel (The New Windsor) was pretty central and just a short walk to everything. I really enjoyed this city very much. It was much more developed and modern than Aswan and everything was on a much larger scale. The Luxor temple is situated right in the middle of the city! Imagine, rather than like a European city with a statue of some famous general or such, there is an entire ancient temple in the city square. To see this lit up at night against the background of the Nile was just beautiful. In any case, I'll admit we spend lots of time in Luxor shopping and haggling in the bazaar--a skill I am much too good at! I had shop owners give me looks of disgust because I got them to give me a really low price that they didn't want to give--even my tour leader said he was amazed at the prices I was getting.

"No Hassle" in the markets of Luxor...yeah right!

So that was loads of fun. And call me crazy but I have this rule where I insist on trying the McDonalds whenever one presents itself in a foreign country. I was always very against this, but I was in London once and with a girl from Canada and she thought it'd be fun to go to McDonalds. I was horrified, but agreed. Since then, I go check it out in each country that I am in, just to see if it's different. So Luxor had a McDonalds which actually boasted a great view overlooking the temple!

Colored reliefs at Karnak

On Saturday we visited Karnak temple and went by a lovely horse-drawn carriage as it's only about 1 mile from the city square and our hotel. Karnak is renowned because it was one of the largest temple complexes to exist. This is the famous temple where many of you have probably seen the pictures of an avenue lined with statues of a rams head. The temple was nice, but not spectacular. Plus, the throngs of Japanese tourists really

spoiled it for me--especially when I got caught in one of their massive huddles and someone fire bombed me with a really stinky fart. I was not too happy about that. But it was nice because we had a proper Egyptologist as our guide and he was really funny. Of significance at the temple was the largest still standing obelisk in all of Egypt. It's around 90+ feet high and is carved from a single piece of granite. There is also a large statue of a scarab. I was confused at first because if you ever saw the movies "The Mummy", the guy was put into his sarcophagus alive and covered in scarabs (a type of beetle). But in fact, these symbolize good luck!! So you can walk around the scarab statue for good luck...yeah.

Entrance to Karnak Temple

So that's about all there is to tell of Luxor. I wanted to give more amazing details about the temples, but I am really tired as I've been on the road for quite some time to get to where I am now. You all can search the internet for more information if you so desire.

Hypostyle hall at Karnak

Obelisks at Karnak

Side streets of Luxor

Smoking sheesha in Luxor

Statue of Ramses II at Karnak