21-22 March ’04 Finished our day in Cairo by leaving the hotel just a little later than we really thought we should, but, our hosts thought we would have plenty of time to make it to the train station. After all it was only just a “short distance from the hotel”…. Well first off, the driver wouldn’t take us for the price we were told it would be. No matter how hard I tried he wouldn’t budge. After agreeing on “his price” we took off in a mad rush with the transmission of his car constantly jumping out of gear. Every time it would disengage or shift gears we thought the whole thing was going to let go…..but, we were underway….we thought. All of a sudden out of a star lit night, he was pounding on the dash of the car and saying something that we couldn’t understand….it turned out we were running out of GAS!!!! NOT NOW!!! Well we did make it to a gas station, filled, got back on the road and ran smack dab into a traffic jam. OK, time was really getting short now but he kept trying to tell us to sit back, relax and we will get there with time to spare. Well, he must write the book and this sort thing because upon arrival at the station, getting our luggage to the track, verifying our location at the track, we found the train was going to arrive 20 minutes later than we had been expecting. So goes it here in Cairo…. Money!! (Money was our Porter) Well there it was, 4am and we were being woke up to have breakfast and get ready to disembark in Luxor….boy, that was a quick night !!! Mohammad met us at the station and took us to a hotel to discuss our day of sightseeing and arranging our space on the boat to Aswan. Let me remind you how fast things are going, the Valleys of the Kings,
Valley of the Queens,
Ramesseum, and the Temple of Seti I
and all this on our first morning in Luxor. This adventure took us to the other side of the Nile River, can you believe it, THE NILE RIVER!!! It really is hard to believe sometimes, that we started this trip just a week ago and here we are in the Upper Egypt area and sleeping on a boat on the Nile River, WOW! Let’s digress back to this morning and our tour…First it was 101 degrees in the shade. The tombs of both the Kings and the Queens were quite stunning, HOT,but stunning... This is the entrance to the Queens Tombs...
To think of all the planning, designing, and labor that went into these incredible tombs. The walls were covered with decorations and inscriptions many of which was to instruct the Pharaoh on how to reach the after-life. These tombs were built after the pyramids, out of solid rock, cut into the mountain, and thought would be vandal proof. Unfortunately, they were broken into and robbed as well. Enough, tough day, hungry, tired, going to bed….