HAPPY NEW YEAR! LUXOR AND KARNAK

Breakfast would be over by 9am, so we got everyone up a bit earlier in order to make it. Most of the groups had already eaten breakfast and disembarked by 8am for their tour. On this morning, we certainly appreciated being able to dictate our own schedule a bit. We were going to enjoy a leisurely morning, and then do our visit to the Temples of Luxor and Karnak in the afternoon. It was also nice to have the sundeck practically to ourselves for the morning.

Avery did eat a piece of toast and a bit of banana but still had no real appetite. He had woken in the middle of the night with diarrhea. I have been giving him the local medicine, but it seems to be taking some time for the bug to work out of his system. Fortunately, he has not had a fever since Wednesday.

Over breakfast, we met a couple from the Aussie group that are actually from Tasmania. Very nice folks and they could really talk to you all day. Later when we saw them at lunch, they gave Olivia and Avery little gifts – Egyptian stencil and puzzle books – that they’d purchased on their morning expedition around Luxor -- how incredibly thoughtful!

The Love Boat captain

We lucked out once more. Not only did we dock in Luxor as the outer most boat, but again our rooms were on the side looking out over the Nile instead of into the rooms of passengers on the neighboring cruise boat. The kids visited the captain of the boat – an indigenous looking old Egyptian man with a turban sitting cross-legged with a stick in his hand. He didn’t speak any English but a little French. Josh asked about the navigation and the measurement of the depth at various points since there were no controls to indicate this. The captain pointed to his brain. It’s all in there. After we took a few photos with him, he pointed to his ring finger and asked if Charlotte was married?!?

Karnak is huge

After lunch, we met Monty for our tour. First stop: Karnak, the largest Temple in the world. The site is 65 ½ acres but they are still excavating to see if it was larger. There are 134 massive columns in the Hall of Columns courtyard. The temple is dedicated to Amun-Ra, the King of Gods. Built from 2100BC by the middle kingdom pharohs when Luxor first became the capital of Egypt, it continued to be added to until 30 BC. All of the other Gods we’d seen depicted were symbolically associated with an animal – not that the Egyptians worshiped animals, just so that the reliefs could be distinguished from one another. While other Gods had animals as their symbols, Amun-Ra took a human face and wore the large hat with two feathers coming out. It’s hard to say anything about this place other than it was staggering…and very crowded.

Avery getting lost among the Obelisks

There were originally 11 obelisks built within the Temple but today only three that are still standing.

Avery was incredibly disagreeable during the entire visit – until the very end when we started to take some fun photos of him. It’s a shame but he didn’t want to stay behind in the car, and so he was making all of us miserable.

When we finished our visit at Karnak, it was twighlight, so Avery happily stayed in the car when we arrived at our next stop The Temple of Luxor. Luxor was, as Monty put it, the “vacation home” of the God Amun-Ra. Amun-Ra came to this temple for 10 days of the year (later the festival grew to 27 days). His statuette was brought up the Nile on a barge from Karnak. Built from 1450 to 1350 BC, Luxor is smaller in scale than Karnak but still large and impressive. A three-kilometer ancient road dating back to 327 BC runs between the two and is lined with human-faced sphinxes. It was dusk. Everything was illuminated. I don’t know if it was seeing the temple at night, all lit up, or if it was nicer than Karnak, but we felt it was our favorite.

Luxor at dusk

Amun-Ra took a different form at Luxor, he was not shown walking but standing still with a huge erection and was now the god of fertility for those 10 days of the year (or 27 days as the case may be) when he was transported there.

In the case of both Temples, Ramses II was heavily involved in completing projects and expanding on what the pharohs ahead of him had built. But we also saw statues of Tutankhamen and Queen Hatshepsut.

Unique to Luxor is that it is the only ancient temple with a working Mosque inside. It is built on top of one section of the early gates. And, especially seeing it from afar, it gives the place a magical quality unlike that of the other temples we’d visited along the Nile.

As we were walking through the hall of columns, I noticed a group of five Muslim girls staring at Olivia. Shortly thereafter, one asked if they could take a picture with her, and with the tall one, too? It was really adorable; these girls with their headscarves wanted a photograph with our daughters in their shorts and sweatshirts!

Our new friends

Our last dinner on the cruise went seamlessly --that's because Avery decided he wasn't hungry and wanted to stay in the room to watch a movie. Again, it’s nice that the boat is so manageable in size because he could easily find us in the restaurant if he chose to. After their disco foray the night before, the girls were particularly exciting about going back to the disco tonight. So, after dinner we let them go dance while we packed. They met a nice couple of girls, sisters from Paris, and again had a great time.