Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
We began our day by driving across the Nile to the West Bank and visiting the Valley of the Kings.To protect these tombs the Ancient Egyptians tried to hide the tombs of their kings in a desolate valley on the west side of the Nile just beyond the green, fertile strip of land on the river bank.Within this Valley there are 62 known tombs one of which is Tutankhamen's.Rene and I paid the extra 100 Egyptian Pound ($20 AUD) to go inside his tomb and see his mummy.The tomb was quite small compared to many of the others we have seen but Ibrahim our guide later explained that was due to the fact that he died so young (19) and the tomb probably wasn't finished.We were also surprised at how small he was.After we left the tomb of Tutankhamen we were able to choose 3 other tombs to go inside.Ibrahim recommended about 5 or 6 so we chose from them and ended up visiting the tombs of Ramses III, Setnakht and Seti II.Our next stop was The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut it was only a short drive from the Valley of the Kings and is a huge complex that celebrates a very cunning and important woman in Egyptology (she dressed as a man and did many other things so as she could rule Egypt). We finished our visit to the west side of the Nile with a quick photo stop at the Colossi of Memnon. Next we went to see how they make pots etc out of Alabaster and then we had the opportunity to purchase things. Then to save time Ibrahim got the bus driver to drop us at the banks of the Nile so we could catch a ferry boat across to our cruise ship and have lunch while the bus driver drove our luggage around. (This saved us about 40 min and the timing was perfect because by the time we checked into our cabins and had lunch our bags had arrived, that is all except mine because mine went on the wrong bus, well that's what we were hoping!)While we spent some time resting on the sundeck the other group arrived and sure enough my bag was on their bus (Phew).We spent the afternoon on a horse and carriage city tour.I got to drive the carriage for a lot of the tour which was fun for a while but I was ready to jump back into the back seat when we got to the small crowded streets of the market.We had a really nice Buffet dinner on the boat and went up to the lounge to have a drink and pay for our balloon ride that we were going to do the following morning.As we had an early start we went to bed fairly early.
- comments