Egypt: Part 1 - Karnak and Luxor Temples

Kim and I at the airport getting ridiculously excited about flying to Egypt!

This school year has been insane with a packed schedule at school and tutoring during the evenings! But alas, Eid Break FINALLY came and thus I got to embark on my first traveling adventure of this school year --- Egypt and Jordan!

Kimberley and I left for the airport 3 hours before our flight....we were shocked by the amount of people flying out that same night! We stood in a line that stretched OUTSIDE the airport for 30 mins before even getting in the main doors. We kept our elbows up and our feet firmly planted and managed to push our way inside and through security. It turns out over 64,000 people flew out of the airport that night because of the holiday and Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca)! Our plane was delayed and we ended up getting into Luxor 3 hours late. Thankfully, our ride from the hotel was still waiting and took us safely there. :)

We stayed at the Nefertiti Hotel in Luxor and it was AMAZING! It cost only $30 Canadian per night for a clean and simple room and provided breakfast on the rooftop terrace in the morning. It is located on the edge of the bazaar and right beside Luxor Temple along the Nile. The view was beautiful and the atmosphere fantastic! Ahmed, the manager who's family has owned the hotel for over 60 years, took excellent care of us making sure we had places to go and good guides to take us. He even organized for his friend to drive down from Alexandria and meet our train when it came into Cairo at 5am! ANYWAYS, an excellent hotel that I recommend to EVERYONE who goes to Luxor.....be sure to ask for Ahmed! Here's the rooftop terrace and the view from up there.

This is where we ate breakfast and supper each day with the view of the Nile and the mountains where all the royal tombs are!

A more close up shot of the Nile......

I have so many cool pics to post, so I am going to try and keep the "chatter" from here on, to a minimum so as not to bore you too much! Our first adventure was to go and see Karnak Temple of Thebes. Here are some shots from that visit!

The very large entrance to the Temple lined with ram-headed sphinx!

Some engravings on the stone walls

This random tourist would not get out of my way for a picture, so I had to snap this with him in it! :P

The columns inside the great Hippostyle Hall were HUGE and I found all the carved pictures, cartouches and hieroglyphics fascinating!

One of the only remaining obelisks from the time of Hatshepsut....

The sacred lake in the Temple complex used for sacrificial cleansing.

The sun sets quickly in Egypt.......an outer court view of the complex.

The sun setting!

As we were leaving, the moon was already out!

From Karnak Temple we went to Luxor Temple and even though it was only 3 km away, it was completely dark by the time we got there! I'm thankful I bought this new camera before the trip as the pictures in the lit up temple turned out great! :)

This is the "Avenue of Sphinxes" that runs the 3 km between Karnak and Luxor Temples.

This is the front of Luxor Temple!

The enormous statues of Ramses II at the entrance into the Temple...

As we were walking through the entrance, looking up from the right.......

And the left....

Inside the outer courtyard

This is inside the Court of Ramses II......the tops of the columns are shaped like the buds of a papyrus blossom.

Looking from the Court of Ramses II into the Court of Amenhotep II

This just looked really cool and beautiful with the moon...I tried, but couldn't quite capture the same feeling in the pic!

The walls were covered with various reliefs, here are just a few.

From here we went back to the hotel and went to bed as we had to get up at 3:30am for our sunrise hot air balloon ride! Stay tuned for the next post with those pics! :)