LUXOR PART I

hey all,

here is what i did this weekend (it ties nicely with how everything is travel travel travel entry a couple of days ago):

on thursday we had off and planned to go north and east to sinai and dahab. it was going to be a two night trip. seven hours before we were supposed to leave one of our roommates who was helping organize it came in and said, the trip has been cancelled because they couldn't organize security for us.

go mad scramble for us trying to not lose the advantage of a four day weekend. i almost went to germany but instead ended up going way south to Luxor. a town that i could only live in if i was a native to luxor, because it is very touristy and get calls all day long for carriage rides and felucca rides to banana island.

we go to the train station to book our tickets and have to travel first class because we booked them so late and couldn't get second, it was an overnight train. this was around 5 oclock and we were at the train station for about an hour trying to get these tickets. as i have mentioned before, lines are not big here. our train was or 1230 or so we thought.

1015 rolls around my roommate runs into the room after coming back from giza saying there was a mistake, we need to leave now, the train leaves at 1000. his hair was the best part about this, mad panicked rush as it was sticking straight up and he looked like someone who had escaped from an asylum. as you can be late for anything in egypt, you cannot however be late for your train. we were egregiously late arriving at 1050 because our taxi got stuck in traffic and the driver decided to take the long way around and at the end talked us out of more of our money. but khalass. we get to the train station, and go to the tourism office and start talking to the guards whom i am very grateful for. they helped us switch our tickets, going to the point where they took greg the other american to the director, telling him to act completely lost and dumb about egypt and having ahmed lie that he was not from egypt to be able to make the switch for the 1230 train.

we depart, it is a long ride to luxor 10 hours this way which was mostly spent sleeping and turning and sleeping when one side starts to hurt. at one point i woke up and had this huge pile of drool pooling on my jacket (pillow) with more coming out of my mouth (very attractive).

we arrive at 1020 and begin our trek encoutering the touristiness of the city by having to pay a ten pound taxi fee which may have cost 4 or 5 in cairo. this day was for temples. we went to karnak in the north by foot-should have biked-but the walk was worth it. think a big temple, old temple, forever temple and then think bigger, older, and foreverer. it was glorious as a human being and historian. the walls of the first pylon were so big i felt as an ant does coming up to a curb. the coolest part was the hypostyle hall which had enormous columns in 8X4 rows which would have all been roofed and painted. and i think of the biggest construction project i have done (which was a fort in my backyard-which was awesome).

by this time we were exhausted and decided to go for a felucca ride, sadly not to banana island as everyone offered us time and again and again. we hung out on the water (with no life jacket) for about an hour and then beached near luxor temple which being somewhat rested we explored no less impressive but just think karnak lite.

this basically is what we accomplished day one because afterwords we went to the hotel and conked out by 1130/1200. for food we had surprise surprise tamiya, ful, and massa'a (i will go through withdrawal when i leave this country) and dinner was shaksouka (vegetables with egg cooked on top) delicious plus lots of aish baladi, think pita bread and guava juice.

to keep it short i will stop here and do part two next.

we slept at happyland hotel in luxor http://www.luxorhappyland.com/ which i would strongly recommend for anyone who goes to luxor. it is not too far from the center of town, the staff are great, the rooms clean, and it felt safe. it was also not too far from the train station. other people i have talked to also have had good experiences here. they will also arrange trips for you (which we didn't do) and we rented bikes (more on that later)