Luxor

Most of my photos from Luxor are actually on my digital  camera so I am unable to show them to you until I get home. But we began the day with a 4:30 wake up call, a boxed breakfast, and a boat ride across the Nile to the West side for an hour's hot air balloon ride. It was absolutely incredible. The photos taken from the air are on my other camera. We did a "sugar kiss", which meant that we got down so low, we were able to touch the tops of the sugar cane as we passed over. We were able to see down into the open floors at the tops of houses where they kept chickens, goats, donkeys, and other livestock. We saw the tombs and Temples from a different perspective. We also flew so high that our ears popped with the change of altitude. We saw fields of bananas, wheat, and lots of sugar cane. When we came down for a landing, we came down close to a school, so we were surrounded by the students who were looking for any baksheesh.  Unfortunately, I hadn't realized we would run into any children on this outing, so I left all my pens and candy back on the Cruise ship. 

This was a very full day. After the hot air balloon ride, we joined the rest of our tour group to explore the Temples and tombs from the ground. We rejoined the ship for lunch at 1 PM, and set sail for Edfu. We were able to sleep that afternoon. I am sure everyone in our tour group DID. Afternoon tea was always served on the top open sun deck around 4:30 every afternoon, if we happened to be on board. And dinner was served at 8 o'clock every evening. Meals always were much later than what we were used to. So it seemed strange to us to be heading off the ship after tea, at 5:30 (sunset), to be touring the Temple of Edfu. But it wouldn't be the last time that happened. A lot of the Temples are lit up at night. When we go back to Cairo, we will go to one of the light and sound shows that are so very popular. 

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