October 23, 2019. Trip Oversight
“I gave up drinking once — it was the worst afternoon of my entire life.”
-Humphrey Bogart
Top 12 Trip Picks
• Pyramids of Giza
• Parthenon – Athens, Greece
• Meteora, Greece (Kalabaka)
• Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia
• West Cork, Ireland
• Banks of the Seine, Paris, France
• London along the Thames
• Luxor, Egypt
• Dublin, Ireland
• Peloponnese, Greece
• Dubrovnik/Trogir/Zadar, Croatia
• Cappadocia, Turkey
Lesson Learned: Luxor is Egypt 101 for visitors. Yes, its still Egypt, the people and the culture is the same, the call to prayer happens five times daily, the demand for bakeesh is ever present, and everyone wants to take you to a rug, papyrus, jewelry, or spice shop that their cousin owns. There are a lot of cousins in Egypt.
What’s different about Luxor is it is much easier to visit than Cairo, or even Alexandria for that matter. If it weren’t for tourists, Luxor would be a sleepy little farming community on the banks of the Nile that just happens to have an interesting past. The people of Luxor REALLY want the tourists to be there. In Cairo, most of the people have business to do that really doesn’t pertain to tourists, directly anyway. Its like comparing Hershey, PA to New York City.
Enjoy Luxor, its much more relaxed than Cairo.
I’d Luv to Kiss Ya, but I Just Washed my Hair
Seven months on the road and countless sites seen, cities lived in, countries visited, and cultures experienced leave you with countless memories. The experiences fill you with fresh opinions, unexpected thrills, new friendships, and real-life exposure to images and places we’ve dreamed about our entire lives, and twice as many more that we never expected. It also leaves you with a yearning to see more. Ellen and I were on the road for 213 days, eight countries (not counting Iceland, or Bosnia-Herzegovina), we slept in 51 different beds, visited 22 UNESCO World Heritage sites, and explored who knows how many towns and cities.
But we’ve also got a list of the things we’ve seen, and places we really enjoyed. Friends continually ask what we enjoyed the most on our journey. That’s tough to decide, or rank from first to last. That’s like asking “What’s your favorite food.” or “Who is your favorite child?”, give me a break. Our trip experience was cumulative, and difficult to separate the experience into discrete events. Much of what we did or saw built upon the events of the previous day or week, and blended over our travels to paint our memories. Here are a few of our favorite memories from our travels in 2019. You may have heard of these places before, but here’s a list of experiences we’d do again. Today I’ll review, Luxor, Egypt.
Luxor
Luxor straddles the Nile about 650 kilometers south of Cairo (400 miles). It holds about 550,000 people and about 1,000,000 donkeys. In ancient times it was known as Thebes. Luxor is a treasure chest. If the pyramids, Saqqara, and the Egyptian Museum fascinated you, you will find Luxor orgasmic. There are absolutely more antiquities here than should be allowed. I admit this post is a little long, but there is so much to see in Luxor.
Colossi of Memnon, Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, Ramesseum
If you ask what is there to see in Luxor, the answer is simply “More than you can do in a week.” When you stay on the west side of the Nile you are only a 10-minute drive to:
• The Colossi of Memnon
• Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut
• Mortuary Temple of Mentuhotep II
• The Ramesseum
• Several abandoned villages (temple and tomb craftsmen)
• Valley of the Kings
• Valley of the Queens
Check the schedules, but many of these sites open early. We were out of the hotel by 6AM and made it to the Valley of the Kings by 7 AM. We wanted to get an early start so that we do both the Valley of the Kings, and the Valley of the Queens on the same day. You have to time your visits to avoid not only the tour busses from Luxor, but also from the Red Sea resorts. If you leave by 6 you can be at the first tomb by 6:15 (the tombs open at 6AM). The Luxor buses arrive at 8AM and the Red Sea buses show up at around 10AM. Hopefully, we’ll be at breakfast by then.
Valley of the Kings
The Valley of the Kings is a valley where all the important kings decided to retire, permanently. For a period of 500 years from the 16th to 11th century BCE, rock cut tombs were excavated for the pharaohs and powerful nobles of the New Kingdom (the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Dynasties of Ancient Egypt). I never can keep all the dynasties straight, or really cared to, but it’s mind boggling to think of how long this civilization carried on as one of the premier world cultures as others around it rose and fell for various reasons.
The Valley of the Kings contains 63 tombs and chambers. It was the principal burial place of the major royal figures of the Egyptian New Kingdom, as well as a number of privileged nobles. The royal tombs are decorated with scenes from Egyptian mythology and give clues as to the beliefs and funerary rituals of the period. Almost all of the tombs seem to have been opened and robbed in antiquity, but they still give an idea of the opulence and power of the pharaohs. My biggest gripe is you can’t tell which tomb paintings are original, and which ones have been redone like paint-by-numbers hobby kits. I’ve tried to do more research on the tombs, but its tedious. Every time I try to search something all you get on the first 12 pages on the search engine are ads for tour groups, hotels, tour guides, cruises, papyrus sales events, flight offers, and porno sites with Cleopatra wearing, well….not much.
The other thing that really bites is how people have defaced these antiquities over the ages. Even the Greeks and Romans had to put their version of “Elroy was here” all over the place. The ancient Egyptians that disagreed with the dead guys came in and chipped their faces, or at least their noses off all the tomb art or statues. Grave robbers did the same so that the ghosts wouldn’t follow them and inflict their revenge for desecrating their graves. Stupid people doing stupid things. We never learn.
Here are the tombs we visited:
• KV6 – The tomb of Ramses IX
• KV9 Rameses V and Rameses VI
• KV8 – The tomb of Merenptah
• KV11 – The tomb of Ramses III
• KV62 – The Tomb of King Tutankhamun (Howard Carter)
Valley of the Queens
This valley, is for the ladies that were not allowed in the Boy’s Valley just a couple klicks down the road. Really, once you are out in the valley, you could not tell the Kings’ place from the Queens’. I mean, it’s not like there was a nice lake, golf course, or country club here that made this real estate more valuable. Sand and rocks. Rocks and sand. That’s all you will see here above the ground. But it still sucks that this valley is for those not good enough (in ancient times) elevated enough to bunk with the big boys.
The Valley of the Queens is where the wives of Pharaohs were buried in ancient times. It used to be called Ta-Set-Neferu, meaning –”the place of beauty” or “Woman know thy place”, the history seems a bit muddled. The Valley of the Queens consists of the main wadi (a valley, ravine, or channel that is dry except in the rainy season) which contains most of the tombs. The main wadi contains 91 tombs and the subsidiary valleys add another 19 tombs. The burials in the subsidiary valleys all date to the 18th dynasty. The reason for choosing the Valley of the Queens as a burial site is not known. The location in close proximity to the worker’s village in Deir el-Medina and the Valley of the Kings may have been a factor. It also may be that the pharaohs just got a bargain on the real estate.
The tombs we toured included:
• QV43 – Prince Set-hirkhopshef,
• QV68 – Queen Merytamun
• QV55 – Prince Amenhirkhopshef
• QV 44 – Prince Khaemweset
We didn’t visit the tomb of Queen Nefertari, even though we heard it was the best in the valley because of cost. It was over $100 and these treks inside the tombs all last less than half an hour. Also, this is where the lines are longest from the tour buses.
Luxor Temple & Karnak
OK, so that covers the west side of the Nile, but the fancy sites are on the east side in Luxor, smack dab in the middle of town. Luxor Temple is a large Egyptian temple complex located on the east bank of the Nile River in Luxor. This is the largest part of the city of Luxor (population and development), and where most of the big hotels are located as well as where all the river cruise ships dock. I mean lots of ships, probably over 250 of them.
Luxor Temple was built around 1400 BCE. Compared to the tombs and temples in the Valley of the Kings or Queens, Luxor is huge. Unlike the other temples in Thebes (the ancient name for Luxor), Luxor Temple is not dedicated to any particular cult god or deity, or king-god. Instead Luxor temple is where many of the kings of Egypt were crowned.
A short taxi ride from Luxor Temple is Karnak Temple. This is a huge complex that took about 2,000 years to build from beginning to end which is one helluva contractor overrun, even by Egyptian standards. It’s made up of a vast mix of decayed temples, chapels, pylons, and other buildings. Construction at the complex began with Senusret I in the Middle Kingdom and continued throughout the Ptolemaic period. Most of the construction happened during the New Kingdom, which means it’s not as old as some of the other tombs, and temples. The development around Karnak was the ancient Egyptian Ipet-isut (“The Most Selected of Places”) and the main place of worship of the eighteenth dynasty of the god Amun. You’ll probably recognize certain sections of the temple as it’s a common film location for movies and TV shows.
I’m not sure Americans get the concept of how long this empire lasted. Chew on this…..Cleopatra lived nearer to Donald Trump in time than she did to the pharaoh Khufu, who built the largest pyramid in Giza. Yep, they ruled the desert for a long, long time.
Be sure to bring a big hat or umbrella. There’s not much shade and you walk a lot. Don’t be too concerned if there’s a line at the entrance (unless it’s Versailles-long) because this place is huge and mostly open, so the further you walk, the more spread out the crowds become. Before you enter either Luxor Temple or Karnak Temple you are fair game for the touts and hawkers in the square. They will swarm around you like flies on fresh meat. Try as you would like, you can’t swat them away, or spray repellant to hold them at a distance. You can be firm, but friendly, and show no hesitancy.
We visited Karnak on the same day as we did Luxor. We might have split these up, but we didn’t want to make the one-hour trek from the west to east twice. Take your time. Soak it in and just imagine how it must have appeared when it was new.
Where to stay: Stay on the West side of the Nile. That’s where the Valley of the Kings and Queens, Hudspeth’s Temple, and a lot of laid back attitude resides. We found our paradise on the Thebes. No, not the ancient city of Thebes, but the hotel, the Thebes Hotel (https://hotelthebes.com/). Our room was large with a king size bed, a private balcony and a common patio that nobody ever came to. We are one flight under the roof-top pool/bar/café that had a killer view of the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, Tombs of the Nobles, and one camel munching on sugar cane in the field below us. There was no AC in our room, but in March with a nice Spring breeze and lots of ceiling fans, you really don’t need it. In fact, I wish it would have been a little warmer. We actually had to wear jackets in the evening to keep warm enough.
While at the Thebes, you’ll need a driver to get to all the sites. Hassan (the hotel owner and professional chef) will be happy to set you up with one, or you can reach out to our driver Al-Tayyeb Hassan (Mr. Kind), telephone: 002-01001349308, tayyeb.hassan@luxor-west-bank.com. When you do, he will tell you “The West is the Best”, well either that or “Those others, they are shit!” He’s colorful, he either knows or is related to everyone on the West Bank, and can out-talk an Irishman on his 4th pint of stout. He will get you everywhere you want safely. Just keep his telephone number handy so you can get him to fetch you if you finish a temple/tomb early. As always, I don’t get a nickel for endorsements, we just found them worthwhile in our travels.
How long should you stay: Four days to a week.
What to see: The tickets to the tombs only gets you into some of the graves. One day might be enough, or you can always go back for a second bite of the apple. The sites listed above are all must-see venues. You can also go to the Karnak show at night which some say is interesting, but we did not come back. That probably would be the single advantage to staying on the east side of the Nile.
Next Up: Dublin, Ireland