Egyptian Transportation-Egypt Day #4

Okay, I'm repenting. I'm sorry I has taken so long to finish our report of Egypt. So here is day #4 which was one of the most amazing days. I feel lucky I get to talk to you about it. We woke up this morning in Luxor. I walked out onto my balcony and our hotel is right on the Nile River! It got better when after breakfast we met to head to our first site and we were being picked up by carriages! Yup, these sad little horses that pull carriages all over Luxor. I sat up front and the driver let me drive! It was really fun. Our horses name was Cindrella and I don't remember the drivers name...typical to remember the horse! It was the first of the day and so the driver let me canter the horse. I was impressed, despite the sad look of the horse, he kept a very nice gait. They train them a little different... Oh, but aside from Elana, none of you care about the horse so I will move on.
We started at the Karnak Temple with our amazing tour guide Refaat. He is AMAZING. He was educated in archeology and holds the official title of Inspector of Antiquities. That's right, when there's a dig going on, he's the one they take the stuff to and he tells them all about it! He said he did that for a while but prefers to be a tour guide! Brother Seely said he is the best in Egypt and we loved him.
The Karnak Temple is one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world and took 1700 years to build! I can't tell you all about it because I have pages of notes from this place but here are some of the highlights. I learned that the Pharaoh's had a birth name, given by their parents and then they had a coronation name, given by the priest when they were anointed to be king. We see the cartouche all over the place with both names. I learned how they put up the huge Oblisks. I'll have to take a picture of my notes to explain. Stay tuned... The coolest thing by far was seeing what they call the Gate 6 or the Holy of Holies. Here you see carvings and hieroglyphs explaining that the king is first being washed, then anointed, giving him the onyx or life and finally being presented at a barrier or veil to the gods. My favorite carving is called the sacred embrace where you see the god taking the king by a shoulder and the words carved below say, "I give you protection, eternal life, stability, power, health, inside your heart like the god Ra, forever." Pretty amazing stuff for those with eyes to see. We could understand all of this because of our amazing tour guide Refaat! We love him! (See picture below)
Next we visited the Luxor Temple 3 miles away. There was an avenue of Sphinxes that connected the two temples and there are several of the Sphinxes that have been uncovered but the rest are under the city of modern day houses so who knows if they will ever be excavated.
So much! Hopefully the pictures do it justice.
We went back to the hotel for lunch and then after lunch we had a Faluka Ride across the Nile! A Faluka is the name of the sail boats here. They are beautiful! We got to the other side and literally (for Miranda) only took a few steps before mounting a camel! Now that was an adventure! They ride very different than a horse but I got the hang of it pretty fast. Our ride back was on a simple passenger ferry of sorts. We had free time the rest of the evening so we decided to go to the Luxor Museum before dinner. It was really cool and just the right amount of stuff. Not like the Cairo Museum where you might have to spend several days in there to see it all. Here we begin the task of understanding all the different crowns you see on the kings and gods. You can identify who it is by the crown and their head sometimes (i.e. if it is a hawk) We are beginning to understand what we are looking at and that is pretty exciting! We swam a little after dinner if I remember right or maybe we swam before dinner and did the museum afterward...its all beginning to get fuzzy to me! But the long and short of it, was that we had an amazing day in Luxor, Egypt!
Oh wait! I remember what we did after dinner! The Ostlers had to be up until 11pm anyway, because that is when we all have to be back at the hotel and so they decided to go out shopping and Deb and I joined them. Really fun on one hand because we like spending time with the Ostlers. Not so fun on the other hand because when you are with adults, the vendors think you have money and won't go as low in the bartering. We went to a bazaar and just looked at things but then we went searching for another bazaar we had heard about. I think we found part of the bazaar and we bought some scarves but then these two men who were helping us out told us about this local bazaar they wanted to take us to. Craig was convinced we were going to see a local Egyptian bazaar and we followed them through the neighborhood only to find ourselves at the door of a local shop, no doubt a friend of a friend. Well we had been deceived! It was particularly funny because just that morning Brother Ostler had warned us about not falling into these traps because you may quickly find yourself miles away from the city and in a dangerous situation. Well we all gave Craig a hard time for it but it was worth the experience! We came home dead tired and the hotel beds were hard but it didn't even matter, I slept well!