Our journey continued back into Aswan for a few more sights before we boarded another ship to cruise down the Nile. There were so many boats that they lines up side by side and we had to walk through a few in order to reach ours.
The new ship was more luxurious than the first and the food was fancier but I really liked the intimacy of the first one better (capacity 120 but less than half full). But I digress: the boats were not the focus of the trip but were much nicer than traveling by bus everywhere.
Luxor: grand, spectacular, awe-inspiring, breath-taking!
Our guide chose to enter the temple area at the end of the afternoon so that we had the opportunity to see the detail of the construction and then the angles and shadows as the sun set and the lights came on.
As I mentioned in the last post, there a so many sphinxes in Egypt. The road, known as the Avenue of the Sphinxes, between Luxor and Karnak, is over 1 1/2 miles and is lined with them (probably had over 1300 in the original construction). One of the things we found amazing is the consistency of the statuary from the north to the south of Egypt, approximately 1600 miles. The ancient artisans were able to construct columns, statues of gods, and sphinxes that were almost identical without using modern technology and usually spanning hundreds of years.
Most of the people in our group had difficulty pronouncing and then remembering many of the ancient names. Our guide had a suggestion for this one:
Back to Cairo to make a few more memories. Along the way we saw a young man hitching a ride…
The Great Pyramid did not disappoint: situated just outside Cairo (think very close suburb) it is a glorious sight.
Tip: Get a map and do some advance reading to prepare for your experience. Remember…lower Egypt is in the north and upper Egypt is in the south!
so…
