Nothing better than waking up in Luxor. I had an early breakfast and then went in search of one of our old friends, our regular river taxi captain. One to say Hello! and two, to organise a taxi for me. Allowing everyone else to sleep in and recover from the previous day’s exertions, I was headed for the Valley of the Kings. I was on my way to buy our Luxor Passes, which are basically a five-day ticket to all the archaeological sites in Luxor. This is a lot easier than queueing for individual tickets, especially when you are buying seven at a time.
Fairly painless, apart from the suggestion that I should pay a “little extra” for I don’t know what. Certainly not for any added value services, in fact, we ran out of staples and couldn’t fix one of the photos to the pass. Welcome in Egypt!
Passes done, it was once more in the Luxor Ferrari and back to the hotel. I see extra revenue is now being garnered by an added boom gate on the Kings Valley road before you even get to the general parking. This is also the case for the road to Deir el-Bahari. Back to the hotel to fetch the walking wounded, still all suffering from the effects of doing the “Faulty” Pyramid. I do count myself among them. As I arrived at the hotel, I was lucky enough to bump into the one of the joint owners. It is always good to reconnect with old friends, and I was lucky to have caught her as she was flying off to the Netherlands the following day.
A short stroll down to the river and a chance to introduce the team to our river boat captain. All aboard, and on to the Luxor Museum. Boat trip done and we were soon up on the Corniche and making our way to one of the finest museums in Egypt. I have written many times about how fabulous the Luxor Museum is and will not do it again here. There are some new exhibits which I had not seen before; always good to see something new. Sadly, the basement display of the Luxor cache statues is still closed. There was a lot of interest in a piece of stone with the floorplan of a Rameside tomb drawn upon it. It looked exactly like the floorplans you see when buying a new house; it just needed the plumbing and electrical points adding in. Amazing.
Leaving the Luxor Museum, we made our way south along the Corniche to the Mummification Museum but missed it by 5 minutes. It closes in the afternoon. Back across the river to the hotel for lunch and a chilled afternoon. We returned later in the afternoon and spent quite some time in this often-overlooked museum. Very honoured to get given a delicious Turkish coffee from the museum boss, and apparently, he said some nice things about me to others in the group. Very special – I do love it here.
Our last stop for the day was the Luxor Temple, already lit up for the evening’s rush of tourists. Coach after coach filled the parking area as we made our way to the entrance turnstiles. Our one Luxor Pass without its photo caused a slight hitch but it was soon resolved.
Luxor Temple is always full value, and this time was no exception. Despite the huge crowds we made our way past the single obelisk, between the two statues of Rameses the Great and into the main temple. Once into the earlier section of the temple, as has become a custom for me, we stepped past the columns of the Amenhotep colonnade to have a closer look at the exquisite Tutankhamun reliefs depicting the journey of the Opet Festival from Karnak to the temple of Luxor. It was all very crowded, but we pushed on through the Sun Court to the very end of the temple, pausing to explain how Ptolemaic cartouches were the answer to deciphering the sacred writing that is hieroglyphic. All of a sudden, the crowds cleared, and we were able to stroll gently back to the first pylon and our comparatively short return to the riverside.
It was intended as an easy day to catch up after our day in Cairo and our long flights, but various watches showed we had done well over 10,000 steps. Tomorrow we start on the West Bank.
