Luxor: Ancient History and Tourist Traps

We spent an extended weekend (from Tue.-Sat.) in Luxor this past week. On Tuesday night, we got on the train for a 10 hour trip south of Cairo along the Nile. Despite sitting up all night, some of us did manage to get some sleep. However, when I woke up in the morning, I opened my backpack to get out the bag of bread I’d brought. I noticed a hole in the bag, which seemed odd, and when I pulled out a piece of bread, there was a huge chunk eaten out of it! Somehow, a little mouse must’ve gotten into my backpack during the night, gross!

We got to our hotel which was very close to the Nile and overlooked the Luxor temple, which was built almost 3,000 years ago – crazy! We spent a lot of time on the rooftop pool at our hotel, relaxing and enjoying the cleanliness and ability to be outside with less than long sleeves.

View from our hotel of Luxor Temple:


I went on a felucca ride down the Nile to visit Banana Island with a few people. We thoroughly enjoyed the slow-paced sailing, good conversation, trying Nile water to see if its sweet like we’d heard (it not, more mossy really), and enjoying the sun. Banana Island itself was pretty much a rip off, but we did see lots of banana trees and ate our fill of bananas. That evening some of us ate a delicious dinner at an English pub and then took a carriage ride back to our hotel.

Our Felucca on the Nile:


At the pub in Luxor:



Friends:

On Thursday and Friday we did tours of Valley of the Kings and various temples built by the Pharoahs. My knowledge of this period of history is pretty limited, so it wasn’t as interesting to me, but it was still amazing to see such ancient structures still preserved. Karnak Temple is the largest religious structure in the world, I think something I read said it could fit 10 cathedrals in it (I may be wrong on that though).

Habu Temple:




Karnak Temple:


Imitating the wall carvings:

Although I had a great time in Luxor with people, the city itself was not the most enjoyable. There were tourists everywhere, which made it hard to see the sites and thus the hassling was quite bad for all of us. Although it was very frustrating and made it hard to be on the streets, I did enjoy being able to bargain in the market in Arabic while the other tourists couldn’t tell how much lower a price I was getting.

Now we’re back in Cairo for almost 2 weeks, the longest stretch in quite some time! Yesterday, we went to the Dutch Institute, which has a program somewhat similar to ours, so we talked to their students about our countries’ foreign policy and how they view Islam. It was fascinating discussion, and we get to do a similar thing on Friday when we’re spending the day with Coptic students. I’m really looking forward to that as some of those students are already friends that I hang out with sometimes.
Regarding the bombing, we feel very safe in the area we’re in, though we are currently taking precautions to not go to areas where tourists normally gather. Thank you for your prayers and concerns for us.
It’s definitely very busy right now as far as trying to get papers written before we leave for travel component in just 3 weeks! The semester is flying by!