Singing with Elephants: Traveling on a Song: LUXOR, NOT JUST A HOTEL IN VEGAS

Luxor, Egypt

Sorry for the delay, folks! There is so much to do and see here that we've been too exhausted to post anything! Here we go...

(Written May 17^th)

I am currently writing to you from the private balcony of our $700/night room overlooking the hotel garden voted best in the world. Whaaaa?! Yes, you read that right. But I’ve jumped ahead. Let me start at the beginning of this amazing day…

We woke up at 4:30am to check out of our hotel and meet our van to go to the airport. Our hotel gave us a complimentary breakfast box since we would be leaving the hotel before breakfast. Awesome.

I’ve been anticipating our trip to Luxor almost as much as our trip to the Pyramids, especially the visit to Karnak Temple and our stay at the Winter Palace Hotel. The flight from Cairo to Luxor was just over an hour long, and we flew over vast desert—as far as the eye could see. It was amazing! Mountains and canyons and a sea of sand.

As soon as we landed, a guide from our Cairo travel agency’s Luxor office met us to hand us our train tickets for our Aswan trip. It was almost all in Arabic…uh oh. It’s a little daunting looking at a train ticket and seeing numbers on a ticket and having no idea what they mean because everything is in Arabic. Luckily, a man at our hotel was able to tell us what everything meant. Phew!

Today was going to be solely dedicated to the East Bank of Luxor. I had set up a car service for our stay in Luxor through a local travel agent, and he met us at the airport and had the driver take us straight to Karnak Temple, as it was too early to check in to our hotel and we wanted to get to Karnak before the afternoon heat set in.

Luckily for us, the temperature had dropped significantly from the previous week. Last week the temp was well over 105 degrees, but today it was only in the high 80s, low 90s. Much better! Still hot, but a hot I can handle!

Our driver dropped us at Karnak Temple, and what was so crazy to me right off the bat was the empty parking lot. Before the revolution the lot would have been teeming with giant tour busses. Today there were three busses total in the lot. So sad.

(The empty parking lot)

Karnak Temple was breathtakingly beautiful and completely overwhelming. A-MA-ZING. The pictures we took don’t even come close to showing the magnitude of this place. The pylons, obelisks, temples, halls, and statues were out of this world. And the hieroglyphics on everything was so unreal. We could literally reach out and touch them. And some of them still had vibrant color on them—unbelievable!

(Me at the entrance to Karnak Temple)

(Inside Karnak Temple)

(Miriam touching the hieroglyphics)

(Miriam whipping out the "Walk Like an Egyptian" pose.)

(The colors are still so vibrant!)

Side note: In one day in Luxor we have taken almost as many photos as we did in five days in Cairo, so prepare yourself, as it was hard to narrow it down. :)

Also, another side note: Do NOT—I repeat—do NOT approach a pack of stray dogs, even within the walls of a temple. You would think they are used to people being around them, but you would be wrong. Three dogs had found shade within a hall we wanted to visit. As we took one step towards them they started barking and growling ferociously, scaring us and the German tour group in the hall next door. Yikes! Guess we aren’t visiting that one…

(Miriam's mom is our lifesaver! She sent us dollar fans to wear around our necks. So perfect! And the pushy merchants want to trade their wares for our fans! Ha!)

We had a blast at Karnak Temple. There were other tourists around, but not enough to deter us from being complete idiots. I mean, why not? How often are you in Egypt? Gotta make it memorable!

(Check out that bell! And not another soul in sight-- unbelievable!)

(Miriam, the mime)

After Karnak Temple our driver took us to our hotel. I booked us at the Winter Palace’s wing-for-poor-people called the Pavillion. (It’s not really the wing-for-poor-people, but when rooms at the Palace start at around $700/night and we were paying $80/night , it’s a major difference.) The Winter Palace was literally a palace for the last king of Egypt. After he was overthrown in the 1950s, the new government turned it into a hotel. During my months of research I read from other travelers that due to so few tourists coming to stay at the Palace, they were upgrading everyone in the Pavillion to the Palace, so we went in with fingers crossed. If anything I would be content with simply using the pool and garden, as it was rated the best hotel garden in the world.

When we arrived to check in, the receptionist was very happy to announce that we would be upgraded to the Palace! Woo hoo!! We have a huge room with a private balcony overlooking the beautiful gardens, and it comes complete with turn-down service with flower petals sprinkled on the bed. AWESOME!

(Our balcony)

One thing we have noticed about Luxor is the touts [people selling their wares, be it caleche drivers (horse/carriage), felucca captains (sail boats on the Nile), people trying to sell you things, or people just wanting to harass you so you give them money] are much more aggressive than in Cairo. Their livelihood is the tourist trade, and since the revolution, the tourists aren’t here, so they are getting very pushy. We get accosted every time we leave the hotel, and they do not take no for an answer, which makes it very difficult—we’ve turned into hotel hermits because we don’t want to deal with it!

We ran out to grab a bite to eat for lunch and then headed into Luxor Temple, which was right next door to our hotel. This temple is not as grand as Karnak, but it was just as cool, as it incorporates many different eras, from Ramses II to Alexander the Great. And we were, literally, the only tourists there. A small group of Asians were shooting a documentary or something, but otherwise it was just us and the temple—absolutely unheard of!

(Entrance to Luxor Temple with the Avenue of the Sphinxes leading the way)

(The Ostermann face making its first appearance in Egypt)

(The infamous Ostermann face makes its second appearance in Egypt)

(Miriam, tempted to steal a piece of hieroglyphics stone)

(Miriam being the baboon god)

(And its third appearance...)

By this point we were really hot and exhausted so we headed back to the hotel to take advantage of their fantastic pool. It was purr-fect. Our travel guide, Hass, then picked us up and took us out to an Egyptian coffee house for his “housepetality” and we got to experience real Egyptian life. It was really neat. The coffee shops had a mish-mosh of tables and wicker chairs, and the lighting was very colorful. Miriam tried very strong Egyptian coffee and I stuck to Egyptian tea. We talked over the business of our Luxor stay with Hass and then chatted with him about his life in Egypt. He then took us into our first convenience store (our hotel in the Cairo area was too far out to have any convenience stores) so we could stock up on water for tomorrow’s trip to the West Bank.