Our favorite way, of course, was taking the boat on the Nile.
It's lovely on the boat -- takes a long time to go upstream, which means where was plenty of time to watch for wildlife on the banks and enjoy the river.
Twice on our trips into Luxor we ate at Sofra, which had delicious food and loads of Egyptian vegetarian mezze, fabulous juice, and a very leisurely pace. Amusingly, one time there were three couples, including us, all sitting there with a Lonely Planet Egypt book nearby.
The main draw in Luxor, of course, is Luxor Temple.
Because we went in the middle of the day, we really had to fend off the guides and the guards who point at something really obvious, say "sphinx", and then want a tip. The temple, however, was very cool -- the columns were amazing, especially the "bunch of papyrus" ones.
Some beautiful carvings -- lots of "fertile" Osiris in, umm, full bloom. Very hard to process that one of these areas was built by Alexander... and depicted him as pharaoh. Still hard to get my mind around that. I mean, the pharaohs seem almost mythical, but Alexander? Wow.
Did a little walking around Luxor afterwards, ran across the sanitized tourist bazaar but couldn't face it. I mean, there's just nothing I want. I can imagine getting caught up in it all and buying statuettes, papyrus paintings, etc. But I don't want any of those things, really. I do regret not getting the Tut-mask toenail clippers, however. ;)
Then over to the Winter Palace, where we used their exquisite bathrooms and walked around their pretty gardens before catching the boat back to the hotel from the corniche. Amusingly -- and (despite asking directions at the Winter Palace -- twice) -- we really had a hard time finding it. It's very difficult to even hesitate on the corniche. Hesitation = touts. You want a felucca? Taxi? Carriage? Eventually we did find the dock, and spotted a westerner waiting. Success.
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| our hotel from the river |
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