Freckles

Sometimes travels don't go as planned, as we had already noticed by this point in our trip. For our second day in Luxor, we planned to have a day packed full of sights such as the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, famous temples, etc. Unfortunately, a travel mate got sick, so we decided we might as well just spend the day relaxing and taking in the heat that England seems to miss out on.

So, I got some sun action as I became good friends with our hotel's rooftop pool and chef.
Hotel review: Royal House Hotel was in a very good location, right beside the Nile and nearby the towering Luxor temple. It didn't have wireless internet, but it had cheap internet in the lobby and had great staff/service. The chef even came in around 4 in the morning the day we left for the airport to cook us up a breakfast-to-go.

As the sun rose, we jumped on a little plane heading for Istanbul, Turkey.

Banana Island

Luxor is known for being swarmed with careches (horse drawn carriages). So, being in the low season, we haggled a desperate careche driver down to an ultimate price and spent a couple hours taking in the morning heat and dropping our jaws as our careche guided us around the dreamy ruins of the Luxor and Karnak Temples.

Entrance strip to the Luxor Temple

The afternoon found us leisurely rowing a felucca down the Nile, stopping at Banana Island for a delicious banana meal from the island's friendly locals.

A local on the island watering his banana fields

The return journey was of course timed to the sunset - a brilliant ending to a perfect day

Stranded in Coptic Cairo

After our camel adventure, we went off to the nearest train station to book our train beds for a twelve hour overnighter to Luxor. We were horrified to realize that there were no tickets available -with or without beds- for the next three days. This caused a problem, as our hotel was already booked for the next night in Luxor, and we were flying from the Luxor airport to Turkey in two days.

 

This dilemma led to numerous hours (which overlapped to the next morning) of arguing, arm swinging, prayer and bribery in the filthy third-world train station, in order for us to finally get tickets to our destination. For the full story including all of the intense action, you will have to ask me in person.

Following our triumph in the station, we had a few hours to kill before heading South.

Our driver raced us over to the old Coptic area of Cairo to wander the streets and check out a few old churches.

Camels, and an Ancient Wonder

I never could have been prepared for the immense culture shock upon our arrival to Cairo, with such numerous contrasts between its culture and my own. However, as we roamed the streets and alleys of this intimidating city, what was at first shock quickly transformed into an appreciation for Cairo's unique beauty



Can you do that?

After spending a day regaining our energy (much needed after two sleepless nights in transit), and soaking up the brand new culture, it was time to scratch a few things off the bucket list.

We found a man near the pyramids who rented out his camels to tourists, and spent some time drinking gritty Egyptian coffee in a back room behind arabian curtains, until we had finally haggled the price down to one we could both agree on.

I always imagined that Egypt would have pyramids popping up all over the place, but I soon found out that there are actually three main pyramids, with just a few smaller pyramids scattered throughout the rest of Egypt. The three main pyramids are located here in Giza, each one being built as a tomb for a Pharoah - the first was the largest, his son's was smaller, and his grandson's was smaller yet, as it was spiteful to surpass your father. Each pyramid contains the pharoah and his wife. There are three smaller pyramids beside the tallest pyramid, and they are the tombs for that Pharoah's three extra wives. The grandson pharoah's tomb also has three smaller pyramids beside it - same story.

Riding our camels through the desert for 3 hours in the mid-day sun naturally made us hot, weary, and yearning to relax around some shai (tea) and sheesha in a quite alley cafe. Unfortunately, we didn't get that far.

We never expected the major stress that was waiting for us instead.