Today was a huge day. We were up at 3:30 to get to the Cairo airport in order to take our flight to Luxor.

It was a Nile Air flight and fortunately only one hour long. As the plane came in to land, we started to drift sideways, which was different, but luckily the pilot corrected before we rolled along the runway in a fiery mess.

Luxor was the capital of Egypt for centuries and most of the important pharaohs ruled from there.

We drove straight from the airport to the Luxor Temple. There are some enormous statues and one impressive obelisk. It's such a shame that most of the obelisks from Egypt are now elsewhere all over the world. The twin to the one we saw today is in the Place de Concorde in Paris.

The Egyptians are currently restoring a 3.2 kilometres road between the Luxor and Karnak temples that was originally lined with 1,800 sphinxes. It is very impressive and will be interesting to see once restoration is complete.

After the temple we made our way to the boat we will be cruising on for the next four days along the Nile. I don't know why the Egyptians go on about this river, seeing it's only one Nile long. I guess they're in de-Nile. Anyway, after a truly delicious lunch where we listened to Niles Davis and Niley Cyrus, we hopped back on the bus to go to the Valley of the Queens.

Set amongst the rocky hills of the Sahara, it is hard to believe that the Egyptians managed to cart an entire funeral procession to these tombs, including the giant sarcophagi before proper roads, vehicles, etc. But they managed it and the results to day are truly breathtaking. We saw a couple of tombs dug into the limestone bedrock, the walls all decorated in hieroglyphs and murals. The colours are almost as vibrant today as they were 3,500 years ago when they were made, apparently because they mixed actual coloured stones like lapis lazuli and malachite with egg white to make their paints.

At this point it bears mentioning the vendors in Egypt. Whenever you get off the bus it's like running a gauntlet trying to get through the hordes trying to sell you their cheap souvenirs and books. They can be very persistent and if you as much as glance at what they're selling you will be hounded relentlessly until you are forced to be rude to get rid of them. I know they are trying to make a living, but they would sell far more if they let people look without the constant hounding.

After the Valley of the Queens we went to The temple of Hatshepsut, which is built into the mountain and looks like it was built yesterday. Many columns and statues hold up multiple terraces. Amazing.

Our guide definitely saved the best for last, though as we finished our day's touring at the Valley of the Kings. If you'd stuck a stick of dynamite up our nostrils, our minds couldn't have been more blown. We saw four tombs decorated extensively in coloured bas relief and intricate murals. Just stunning.

The highlight was Tutankhamun's tomb, discovered in 1921 and boasting murals that look like they were painted last week. In the burial chamber they have left the original gold-leaf sarcophagus, which was truly breathtaking.

It was then back to our boat and besides our train driver running into a van on the way out of the Valley of the Kings, it was uneventful.

We went for a shower when we arrived back at the boat and I only mention this because the shower in our cabin is a corner shower with a curved face. It is tiny. When I say tiny, getting into it was like squeezing a sausage into a test tube. When I finally managed to squeeze myself into it, Lidia had to pick up the shampoo for me and then put it back on the floor because there wasn't enough room to bend over. Things were then going great until I dropped the soap…