luxor is grand

April 23 LUXOR

Edit:  one of the photos in this entry (the one of the village landscape) made it as the "travel photo of the day" on this journal thing's website!!!  hahahaha!  here is what they said about my entry... how glamorous, no?:

"Home of King Tut’s Tomb, the Valley of Kings, and other famous archeological treasures, Luxor is a special destination rich with history and wonders. Traveling across Egypt this spring, lisaaltieriatcal got to see this special city from a unique perspective — the basket of a hot air balloon. Sailing over houses and buildings, lisaaltieriatcal caught a bird’s eye view and wrote about it in her journal, Luxor is Grand:"

              We spent the night on a train from Cairo to Luxor. It was the start of the mosquito bites that plagued me for the rest of the trip, apparently I am allergic to them because I got a four inch diameter mound of swelling around each one and am still tending to them a week later. After checking into the hotel, we took these funky little horse drawn carriages (the guy let me drive!) to Karnak Temple. 

              At 4:30 the next morning, I went for a hot air balloon ride over Valley of the Kings with this character of a guy who is 30 years old and has traveled everywhere on Earth that the sun shines. It was his fifth hot air balloon ride, but it was my first and it was SO COOL. Our balloon (there were also about 10 other people in the basket) went farther and lower than any of the others, which made it even more special. We swooped over this little Egyptian village and were practically lowered into peoples’ houses.  All the kids and the ladies were waving and we could see them doing everything like milking cows, sleeping in bed (they don’t have roofs on many of the rooms), cooking, etc. I was creepy and took pictures so you can see that here.

    After that we joined up with the rest of the group to ride donkeys to the Valley of the Kings.  This was so much fun, everyone was raving about it for days afterward.  Everyone looked so ridiculous on their donkeys and we all kept trying to beat each other to the Valley.       The Valley of the Kings was incredibly hot.  We went inside three tombs, which all looked kinda the same and were not that impressive.  I saw Howard Carter's mansion, he's the guy who discovered King Tut's tomb.  I didn't go into Tut's tomb because one of the girls in my residencia went to Egypt a couple weeks ago and she told me to save my money because it's just an empty rom and isn't worth it the $14.  When we got back to the hotel I passed out for the night and it was great.