Luxor is about 400 miles south of Cairo and is the home to many ancient temples and tombs. No pyramids, since the Egyptians stopped building pyramids as the resting place for their rulers, as they found that they were easily robbed. So these tombs were easier to protect.
The Temples, again, have ancient Egyptian influences, but also Greco-Roman, Christian, and Muslim influences easily seen and recognized. I don’t want to bore y’all with lots of details, but if you Google Temples of Luxor, or Valley of the Kings, and Valley of the Queens, where they are buried, I am sure it will explain a lot better than I could anyway.
Again, incredible to witness such buildings from humanity’s ancient past.
View of the Valley of the Tombs from our boat
These hieroglyphics, over 4,000 years old, are still pretty clear and crazy detailed
This is a bas relief carving on the wall of Alexander the Great
Sunrise over the Valley of the Kings
We also took a hot air balloon ride this morning. That was also very cool. Hallie was a little nervous to get onboard. (I was not. The first 2 hot air balloon rides I took ended up in kind of crash landings–not truly crash, like the balloon exploding and falling for the sky, but one landed too fast and too hard and the basket tipped over and we got dragged through the rocks and sand. The other time we landed in a tree and got tore up a bit by the branches. Nothing serious. But I figured this 3rd time HAD TO be a charm 😉)
And it was. Flew for about 45 minutes without incident. 👍
Crazy that the basket held 28 of us. You wouldn’t think a balloon could lift that many people, but I guess some are even bigger than that.
A memorable experience for sure.
From our hot air balloon
Heading down the Nile now (though “down the Nile” means heading North/not south. One of the few rivers that flows northward. It is also the longest river on earth and helped shape the history of mankind for sure.
Cruising the Nile
PS – if anyone has questions they’d like to ask, please just email me and I’ll be happy to reply one-on-one.
Onward!