Upper Egypt Travels

I know it's been several days since I last updated the blog, but I have a good excuse--I was in southern Egypt, based at Luxor. This was without a doubt the coolest stuff I've seen since coming to Egypt a few weeks ago. If you ever plan a visit to Egypt, Luxor is an absolute must.

I've included the link to many pictures from the couple of days we were in Luxor at the end of this post, but here's two special panoramic pictures. Again, if you click on them, they'll get much larger.

This is Deir al-Medina, a village from around 1500 BC where the people who worked on the tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived. It was incredible to see the bricks made of mortar mixed with straw from such a long time ago. On the upper left hand side of the picture you can see the place where the archeologists lived. On the right hand side of the picture, you can see the village's temple.

This is a picture of the temple of Queen Hatshepsut. It was probably one of the highlights of the trip. If only it wasn't 102 F, it would have been perfect.

Luxor is much smaller and quieter than Cairo and made for a pleasant stay. We ate a lot of traditional Egyptian food, including stuffed pigeon...which is actually really good. It tastes just like turkey, but there's hardly any meat on it. I also had really good fruit juices: watermelon, strawberry, and banana. Watermelon is probably the best one.

Other than the extreme heat and the overwhelmingly pesky carriage drivers, Luxor is great. You have to be careful because prices are HIGHLY inflated. One of my friends bought an "authentic" pharaoh statue (which we later determined was made out of plastic) for 10 LE when the original price was 200 LE (dropped the price from $36 to less than $2).

The next few days I'm going to be studying, but on Saturday, we're leaving for the Red Sea for almost a week. I'll keep ya updated! Have a good Wednesday!

Here's the link to the pictures from our Luxor trip.