Valley of the Kings & the Temples of Luxor, Egypt
/Our first day in Luxor we went to the West Bank of the Nile River to see some of the many temples and sights. First, we stopped at the Valley of the Kings, which is a valley where tombs of Pharaohs were cut into the rock. This mainly took place from the 16th to the 11th century BC, which is part of what makes it such an amazing and famous site. This is also the location of the tomb of King Tutankhamun, famous since it was one of the only tombs not to be completely robbed of all of its treasures. The Valley of the Kings was incredible, but it was also furiously hot and full of men pressuring us to pay them for doing nothing at all and generally just following us around. I probably will not visit again, but would recommend friends to take a trip with a guide, if for no other reason than to avoid harassment.
After that, our driver took us to the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, which is another UNESCO World Heritage sight. Next, we visited the Ramesseum, which is the name of the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses II. You can see in our photos that this sight also includes the fallen colossal statue of the pharaoh, which was quite cool. There was only one other tourist at that temple, and no strange men trying to sell us things, so it was a highlight for me! We also visited Medinet Habu, which was another huge and amazing temple, as well as the enormous Colossi of Memnon. I took a picture of that so you can see just how huge they really are. I look like an ant!
The following day, we visited Karnak, which is the second-largest ancient religious site in the world, after the Angkor Wat Temple of Cambodia. It's absolutely massive, with piles and piles of stones with hieroglyphs just lying around. The sphinxes at this temple line an avenue from Karnak to Luxor Temple, which is about 1.5 miles away! Luxor Temple was our next stop of the day.
After Luxor, we flew to Sharm el Sheikh to go scuba diving in the Red Sea! I'll share video of that in the next week or so! We love diving!
