Our Trip to Luxor: Calesh Anyone?

In late November the Heiss family and us decided to spend part of our January vacation in Luxor Egypt. Luxor is in southern Egypt where many of the famous tombs and temples are. The train ride down was relatively uneventful. Although I did notice this on the train:

I saw this plaque near the bathroom. Notice the maker: Messerschmitt. The train was pretty old and dirty. This train is at least 20 years old.

After our 10 hour train ride we arrived in Luxor. The first thing I noticed was how clean the air was. Once you've lived in a city as dirty as Cairo you really enjoy getting out and getting fresh air. Our first stop was the temple of Luxor:

This is a line of Sphinxes that leads right up the entrance of Luxor Temple.

Entrance to the temple. In the middle of the picture you can see a minaret from a mosque that was built inside the temple.

Andrew our tour guide. He was free. No baksheesh.

Possibly an old Greek shrine.

A big obelisk right outside the entrance.

5 Temple Monkeys

Hieroglyphs below one of the two large statues in front of the temple entrance.

These are columns inside the temple.

Here is the mosque they build inside the temple.

Looks like who ever wrote this wanted to emphasize that with a "!"

This Christian mural was VERY cool. It was placed over a huge wall of Hieroglyphics

There is some color left on these walls.

This is the entrance to the Holy of Holies. You can see at the very top is where they would have help the the veil.

After our visit to the Temple of Luxor we went back to our hotel for a rest. In the evening we went on a felucca ride.

Ahhh, the dirty Nile.

One ugly, old and dirty boat.

Camels on the east bank of the Nile.

The next morning we got up real early and headed out to the east bank and went to the Valley of the Kings. But on our way up to the Valley we stopped and saw the Colossus of Memnon. Unfortunately we were unable to take any pictures inside the tombs. But they were hot, humid and VERY cool.

Colossus of Memnon

Here we are waiting to go inside a tomb.

Carolee thought this man next to her was very handsome.

Next was the temple of Hatshepsut.

David Layton, Rachel (the little one) and Nancy Heiss, Carolee and I in front of the Temple of Hatshepsut.

The view from atop the temple.

More tombs up in the hills.

Next stop: Temple of Ramses. This temple was the coolest one we saw in Luxor.

I thought we'd give you some perspective.

Carolee entertained us by explaining the Hieroglyphics and telling us the stories written on the walls. In her own words and her own interpretation of course.

Egyptian infantry

Egyptian archers

These murals on the ceiling were beautiful. The color was amazing.

How nice.

Talk about fat cow huh?

The next day we went to the Temple of Karnak and the last site we visited on our trip.

So that would be me taking pictures with a camera that broke later that day. These are Ram headed sphinxes in front of the temple.

My beautiful wife and the very cute Rachel Heiss.

These next few pictures were found within the Holy of Holies. If you've been endowed some of these actions will look VERY familiar.

Us in front of the alter in the temples' Holy of Holies.

Somebody must have not liked this guy because he was completely grinded out of the wall.

Once again, does this look familiar? Even the compass above his arm is impressive.

This is where the ancient Egyptians preformed their animal sacrifice.

Same guy, same chiseled off face.

Picture on the right: The blue line marks the highest the Nile river ever flooded inside the temple.

On our way out.

After we left the temple, searching for some lunch we passed by a Muslim funeral procession.

Our attempt to leave Luxor was the usual Egyptian headache. Andrew and I went back to the train station the day before we were to leave and asked to buy our train tickets home. The man told us that the train was all full, but if we returned the next morning, they might have more seats. Is it just me or does that not make any sense? How will they magically have more seats if we come back the next morning. So a little frustrated we returned home to research this phenomenon. Andrew found some web sites that talked about the Luxor train scam. It said that often the train station will tell you their train is full so that you are forced to stay in longer. We knew the train was not full and returned the next day to purchase our tickets on a very not full train. We were ready to go by our third day. We had seen pretty much all there was to see. Time to return to dirty ol' Cairo.