luxor
We just got back to Doha yesterday morning, but I was exhausted because our last night in Egypt, we climbed Mt. Sinai to catch the sunrise and then right after we took a red eye flight with a 6 hour nighttime layover at Kuwait Airport. I feel much better now though, after a nap yesterday and then a full night’s sleep. Egypt was amazing!! I feel like I was able to see so many impressive things and learn about ancient Egyptian history/culture. I had to use some memory recall back to sixth grade—ancient civilizations in Mr. Sand’s class :) Our first stop was Luxor, the ancient city of Thebes which is right on the Nile. It was the religious capital of Egypt for a long time and the place where they worshiped Amun Ra, the sun god. We went to Karnak, the temple for Amun Ra as well as the Valley of the Kings, where the tombs of many pharoahs are located. Karnak was huge, full of obelisks, pillars, and sphinxes with carvings and hieroglyphics on everything. We biked out to the Valley of the Kings—I hadn’t been on a bike in years so I was a little rusty, but it was really fun (ok, except for the uphill parts)! The tombs were elaborate, with many rooms for mummification, storage of treasure and of course for the actual bodies. Noreen and I got in trouble at our first tomb—we tried to sneak in a photo (not allowed) and one of the guards saw us. He tried to confiscate our cameras, but we kept saying that we didn’t have them and finally he let us off with a warning and even proceeded to give us a mini-tour in the tomb.No more sneaky photos after that. From Luxor we took an overnight train to Cairo—our worst travel experience in Egypt. It was uncomfortable, we couldn’t sleep and there was something wrong with the train in front of us as we got closer to Cairo so we were 3 hours late in the morning and desperate to find a hostel—but no worries, we made it!
