Karnak Temple & Luxor Museum

Today we were woken at 2:45 AM for our 6:00 AM flight to Luxor. It's a good thing we didn't drink too much the night before. Luxor is about 200 miles, as the crow flies, from Cairo so it made sense to fly.

We stayed at the Sofitel Winter Palace which was a pretty decent place.

On the way from the airport to our hotel, where a breakfast was waiting, this was our first real view of the Nile.  The Valley of the Kings is way over on the other side in those hills.

As with the pyramids of Giza there are many pictures and much information available on the internet so I'm not going to go crazy here.  Just a few.

At the entrance to Karnak Temple they have a scale model showing the entire layout as it was back in the day. About 25 of our group are in this picture and it's a pretty mugly bunch.

There was something special about all these goats that lined the entrance way.  Can't exactly remember what it was.

Maybe because they had a small man growing in their beard.

One thing that amazed us was the colours that were still present after thousands of years. This will be something we'll see time after time as we visit more of these sites.

One thing that is really sad, and another thing we saw time after time, is the defacement of many of the carvings and statues. Either the Christers or the Muslims are responsible. Don't remember which. Probably both. Idiots.

And this must have seemed like a good idea on that sunny day back in 1845.

This guy was pretending to be a cleaner but what he was really doing was waiting for people to take his picture and give him a few Egyptian pounds (local currency)

I'm sure he was saving up to get some dental work done.

A similar obelisk to the one we saw just a few days ago in Istanbul.  The one in Istanbul was taken from this very location.

It must have been impressive when it was painted.

And below is another common thing we'll see again and again - a carving of the pharaoh beating the shit out his enemies

After Karnak Temple it's back to the hotel for lunch and then a quick trip to the Luxor Museum.

Just a few pics below but many more here

A few shots from our hotel.

A beautiful pool area.

And a toilet unlike any I'd seen before. The little silver thing at the back of the bowl is a water sprayer. The water is controlled by the white handle just to the left of the bowl. Very ingenious!

Done.