Luxor in a day

Trying to see all the sites around Luxor in a day makes for a very long day. We left the boat at 7:30 am and headed to the East bank to visit the Valley of the Kings. Apparently all the other foreign tourists in Egypt decided to follow that exact same itinerary, so the Valley was rather packed.

Our tickets allowed us to visit three tombs in the Valley (out of the 40-50 that are open - a total of 63 have been excavated). Plus we paid extra for the ticket that allows you to visit King Tut's tomb. The tombs were very different - some larger, some smaller - the drawings and colors inside the tombs were still beautiful. They have endured for 3000 years - let's hope that we don't manage to ruin anymore of it during our modern era. Unbelievably, they're still finding new tombs and new discoveries are taking place every year. Everywhere in Egypt, there are more layers and layers of old civilizations buried under the modern day.

Next we saw Queen Hatshepsut's temple - the only female Pharoah. The temple was vast and impressive, hewn out of the huge cliffs. Alas, her co-regent had been a little sore about her usurping his power for so many years that he had all images of her defaced after possibly having her murdered.


Nefertari's tomb in the Valley of the Queens is supposedly the most magnificient, with fresh colors and beautiful drawings. Sadly, it was closed to the general public a few years ago. We inquired about the amount of baksheesh needed to visit that tomb. Silly me, I was thinking we'd somehow get in for a couple hundred dollars - it was over $6,000, a little too rich for my blood. We will have to come with a special tour group to try and see this one in the future. Nonetheless we visited a couple of others there and enjoyed them because all the other tourists seemed to have decided to give the Valley a pass, rushing off after they'd seen the main Valley of the Kings.

After returning to the boat for a late lunch, we headed out to visit Karnak Temple. This is the temple with huge tall columns - I kept a lookout for falling boulders (used to great effect in both "Death on the Nile" and "The Spy Who Loved Me"). Happily, Jaws was not in sight anywhere. By the time we made it over to Luxor Temple and the famous alley of the Sphinxes, we were exhausted.

Too much to see in one (very hot) day.