Luxoring

After the night in the desert we continued down to Luxor where we had two days of touring various temples and tombs. On the train we met a coepld of other travelers that were coincidentally staying at the same hostel as us, the Bob Marley Hostel (silly name but it was the highest rated hostel in Luxor on hostelworld.com and only $4 per night per person). They were sisters from London traveling together. They seemed like they'd be good company so we invited them to join us on our tours of Luxor, and as the price was right, they joined us (about $20 I think).

Bob Marley Hostel Rooftop

We took a short nap after arriving as the 10 hour overnight train ride was about as restful as playing tug of war with a gaggle of goofy giggling geese guarding Gob's gardens. We then spent the overcast afternoon touring the Karnak and Luxor Temples. Karnak was really cool as it was essentially built piecewise by several Pharaohs, each adding their own part to the vast collaboration of temples, obelisks as well as a sacred man-made lake.

Large Statue outside of the Karnak TemplesOutside of the Luxor Temple

Turns out that every friday night the Bob Marley Hostel cooks dinner for all the guests and conveniently we were there on a Friday. It seemed as if most of the people in the Hostel (about 20 people or so) all went up to the rooftop lounge where a feast was layed out for us to gorge on. None of us could believe that this amazing dinner (as well as good breakfasts) were included in the $4 per night that we were paying.

The next day we went first to the Valley of the Kings. Valley of the Kings was a secret hidden valley in Egypt. When the Pharaohs realized that people could see the pyramids and then would rob the tombs within, they started building tombs in this secret valley. We were told the Valley remained a secret as very few knew its exact location. The workers were blindfolded while in transit to work on the elaborate tombs. They are actually still finding hidden tombs of ancient Pharaohs as the another one was just found in the past year. How crazy is that? They've been there for thousands of years BC and we're still discovering stuff?

Valley of the Kings

We then went to the Temple of Hot-Chicken-Soup (or Hatshepsut as the Egyptians call her). She was a very powerful female king and made this pretty awesome temple for herself so that she could prove her awesomeness.

Huge awesomeness of Hatshepsut

We then went to Ramses III's war temple. I think our tourguide was tired because she told us it was nothing special, but we all agreed that it was pretty amazing. The paintings were quite elaborate and the heiroglyphics carved in were much deeper than usual so that they would never be erased.

Once again, after some relaxation we had to return to the trainstation for another 10 hour, overnight train back to Cairo.