Luxor (We’re Not in Vegas Anymore!)

Luxor has been a wonderful little town. It is very different from Cairo, which is fine because Cairo is such a big city that you don’t really feel like you are in Egypt sometimes. But Luxor is a beautiful desert oasis, where you can see Egypt and how it can actually be beautiful. The Nile River actually looks like a healthy, running river here and is a beautiful color. Luxor is actually split in two by the Nile. We are staying on the larger side, which is the East Bank. Most of the sights, like the Valley of the Kings, are in the West Bank. Today we had the chance to visit the West Bank and see the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut’s Temple, the Valley of the Queens, and the Colossi of Memnon. We were not allowed to take cameras into the valley of the Kings or Queens. This is because they want to protect the tombs. All we can say is that the tombs are amazing and have very vividly decorated tombs. The colors were more vibrant than we expected. The pyramids and tombs have been neat to see up in Cairo, but the tombs in Valley of the Kings and Queens are in such good condition, that you feel almost as if you are the first to discover the tomb and are on a quest to find the other chambers. Below are a few pictures of us at Hatshepsut’s temple.