Nile Cruise - continued

The next day we disembarked the ship for a short visit to a temple in Edfu and then had the rest of the afternoon and evening on the ship. It was nice to lounge on the top deck of the ship, read, relax and watch the small villages and scenery on the Nile as we cruised by. We knew when we were getting near a village because we could hear the call of the muezzin (mosque official) that blasted through speakers posted around the village. About 90% of Egypt’s population is Muslim and the other 10% is Coptic Christian. The Muslims and are expected to pray 5 times a day so we are constantly hearing the muezzins calling the people to prayer through speakers on top of the minarets. Sometimes it almost seems as if they are competing with each other and the calls are painfully loud.

It was a nice day on the boat, UNTIL WE GOT FOOD POISONING! Imagine the worst cramp you’ve ever had and that was how my stomach felt all night. I was miserable and it was necessary for me to stay steps from the bathroom for the frequent emergency visits. The kid in the room next door may have been worse because they had the doctor come twice that night. The crew on the ship said we had the stomach flu because of course they didn’t want to admit it was food poisoning!

After a rough night we packed up our stuff and happily checked off the boat. We had arrived in Luxor and were off to see the Valley of the Kings! The Valley of the Kings is where pharaohs and other royalty who had died were placed in sarcophagi to wait for immortality. There are 62 tombs tucked into cliffs in the desert and we were able to check out a few of them, including the tomb of Tutankhamun! The tombs had long halls that were intricately carved and painted with scenes from Ancient Egypt and the pictures told stories about Pharaohs and royal families. The tombs were very impressive despite all of their original contents being stolen or moved to the museum in Cairo. King Tut’s tomb wasn’t discovered until 1922. I’m not surprised as these tombs were very strategically hidden in the desert! We saw the mummified body of King Tut and his burial mask – both were pretty cool!

Our next stop was The Temple of Hatshepsut. We were on the verge of nixing this site from our itinerary as we’d seen enough temples! But, the picture looked impressive so we decided to go. Carrie, TJ and I agreed that I’d have an aggravated stomach ache if our guide started to go on and onJ The temple was cool and we were glad that went but we agreed that the Temple of Hatshepsut would be the last temple we’d visit in Egypt! There is no question that there are other impressive temples to be seen, but along with the temples comes information overload…

Our final stop was at an alabaster factory owned by a “friend” of our guide. It was cool to see the products they create and the shop had neat stuff but as soon as the owner quoted us a price of more than 10X what it should be TJ got mad and left. The people don’t seem to realize that we don’t want to do business with people who are blatantly trying to rip us off.

We cancelled the next 2 temples we were supposed to visit that day, relieved our guide and driver and checked into our “6 Star” hotel. Again, we were perplexed by the hotel rating system. Our room is mediocre at best, but our room overlooks the Nile and the hotel has amenities such as a pool, restaurants, shops and a bar so I suppose that is how the hotel earns its stars. We have the afternoon in Luxor and then fly to Sharm el-Sheikh on the Red Sea tonight.