Luxor

Next post, from the father, Mr. Richard Greyson:

12/23-24/08 Cairo ended with Aaron and Kate passing on the Citadel tour since he was fighting a fever, the final day’s touring cut short anyway because of a fierce brown dust, dirt, and debris storm that arose and blocked our intended stop at the Ibun Tulum Mosque. AARON'S EDIT: Kate and I stayed home to rest up and grab some Thai food in a much-delayed joint birthday lunch at the delicious Sabai Sabai restaurant in Zamalek. 2.5 hours of late day flying and we are met at Luxor airport by charming Ehab, the Morris Hotel owner.

So it’s Christmas Eve day in Luxor, and the breakfast buffet is really good and complete. We’re all taking it slow and set up some touring for tomorrow, but the walk to Luxor Temple is still a go, past the beautiful Corniche overlook to the Nile and beyond to the Theban Hills, and an ogle at the old Winter Palace Hotel (you have to pay a bunch to walk the grounds). Luxor Temple is magnificent, and like so many sites in Egypt you can walk up and touch history. We are lucky to get this close; such opportunity cannot last forever if there is any hope of protecting such places. And there is so much to see and protect in Egypt that the government can’t marshal the resources to fully safeguard everything. Massive figures, walls and columns covered in writings and art, celebrate religion, war, and agriculture, with occasional traces of the original paint.

Finally, a late quiet and tasty lunch outdoors at the Nefertiti Hotel, then some fair trade shopping. Though much better than Cairo, the air quality and traffic still give Luxor a crowded, chaotic feel, but we’ll take it any day over the capital.

Oh yes, the Morris Hotel – a work in progress that grows on us. Hot water, toilet flushing and room heat issues plague Ehab’s intense efforts to fulfill his mission of producing a first class hotel. The poor guy is sustained by stress and cigarettes. But things gradually smooth out a bit.

A long but pleasant day ensues with our new guide, Shu-Shu, and 8 other hotel guests as we cross the Nile to some key West Bank sights. In old Egypt, the living hung out on the East Bank and the Dead got together on the West side. Habu Temple, Temple of Hatshepsut, Colossi of Memnon, Valley of the Kings, to name a few. Spectacular pylons, temple columns, walls covered in incised cartouches, hieroglyphs, etc. If you had the means, the main business in the many Dynasties was getting ready for the afterlife, planning and building the biggest and fanciest tomb you could muster.

Despite some rotating illness among us, a two hour afternoon felucca ride is welcome relaxation next day. Magaada Youseff has been sailing these craft 40 years, like his father and grandfather; he is charming, with good English, classic good looks, and consummate skill on a very weathered boat with weathered and ragged sails, lines and fittings—where they exist! Later we head for the recommended Snobs Restaurant, which turns out to be a little Western for us, though the food is good.

Following a morning antibiotic purchase, we chance to meet Shu-Shu again, who guides us around the Temple of Karnak. It’s a big place with it’s three principle temple precincts and a huge hypostyle hall. After dinner, we have a slide show of Aaron and Kate’s travels in Greece and Croatia.

With a final day in Luxor, Shu-Shu leads us on a second West Bank visit to the Tombs of the Nobles, Valley of the Queens, the Rameseum, and more. We enjoy her quite a lot, and end by taking her to lunch at the second floor Sofra Restaurant with it’s relaxed outdoor seating and traditional Egyptian food. A late flight to Cairo goes fine, but the connection to Sharm-el-Sheikh is in a different terminal, (contrary to what the New York office of Egypt Air said) and to make a long story short, it’s a long night in the Cairo airport waiting for the 4:40am flight. The ticketing supervisor guarantees we’ll fly next, and sure enough he gets the five of us in a single row along with a US Marine. Now I ask you: how do you so perfectly place a group of six in the same row on standby on a full flight? Eureka! You bump the other six people who happened to have had seats in that row! Well, I don’t know this for sure, but....think about it. The ticketing supervisor and his buddies had hours of fun kibitzing and back-slapping and hugging each other. I had visions of Dean Martin and the Rat Pack.

AARON'S WRAP UP: All the facts are here, but how about a few more details to spice things up a bit?

Let's start off with the city itself. I wasn't much bothered by the air here - maybe that was a relative thing, but I thought it was actually fairly clean. But if you were in the tourist areas, you were getting hassled non-stop. Way worse than Cairo. Try walking down the Corniche in Luxor and not getting asked to take about seven feluccas and about seventeen horse carriages. We did eventually cave on both accounts, especially as the horse carriages are ridiculously cheap (about 10 pounds from our hotel all the way up to Karnak Temple). We did get off the beaten path a bit as well, sneaking up some back alleys for fruit juice and shady shwarma, as well as ridiculously cheap falafel and getting cursed at by a guy on a bicycle who was offended when we didn't stop what we were doing and help him translate a letter he wanted to write to someone in England. Weird.

Next, a couple more temple details just cause we have so many excellent pictures of them. Most impressive and not-to-miss temple, in my opinion, is the Habu Temple, which happened to be the first one we went to, after Luxor Temple itself. Habu is the massive work of Ramses III with some excellently preserved hieroglyphics made all the more stunning by the paint which often remained in tact here. But if you really want to see in tact paint, you have to make it to the tombs. The ones in the Valleys of the Kings and Queens were cool and all, but the worker's tombs at the Deir al-Medina site were particularly interesting and well preserved. Not to mention extremely hot as they're buried several meters under the baking desert sands. Unfortunately, no pictures there, so just another one from Habu.

And, just to reiterate, that was not a fun night spent in the Cairo airport, but we did eventually make to to Sharm el Sheikh...