I'm in love...

Picture 1-Open court in Karnak Temple
Picture 2- Hypostyle Hall in Karnak Temple
Picture 3-Background of our bike rides: Luxor Temple

...with Egypt!
Okay – so we got through about half of the trip.
Thursday January 27th we took a motorboat from our hotel to the Karnak Temple. (Our hotel was on the Nile riverbank. Jealous yet?)
The Karnak Temple had one of my favorite rooms/areas: the Hypostyle Hall. There are 134 columns that just go on and on and it’s beautiful. We definitely got some good pictures there. A few of us would get up on the base of a column and then take some fun jumping pictures, but one of the guys who works there told us not to. I guess it’s not good to climb on the antiquities…ha ha
After the Karnak Temple we took carriage rides to the Luxor Temple and had a fun tour there. All of these temples are so well preserved. Some of the hieroglyphs still have color on them and you can still get a feeling of the grandeur that accompanied these temples.
Thursday afternoon was possibly my favorite part of our Egypt trip. Some girls and I rented bicycles and went on a bike ride with one of our professors (he was our body guard). It was the most amazing feeling to just ride your bicycle along the Nile. There was a nice boardwalk area that we rode along and we got some great pictures. I want to remind you though, that these were not nice, brand new bikes. None of our brakes worked, one girl’s tire went flat by the time we got back, and my bike was so shaky I felt like I had never ridden a bicycle before! But! That just added to the experience and made it so much fun.
When we got back to the hotel, almost everyone was out or doing their own thing, and we needed a guy to go with us into town, so we grabbed our tour guide who was chilling in the lounge. It was great having him go with us because he spoke the language and showed us the cool spots and could explain different areas of town. He also treated us to sugarcane juice because apparently it’s something you have to have! It was actually surprisingly delicious and you all should be very proud of me because I drank the whole thing even though it had a slight grassy taste. Ha ha After going to the market, we took a carriage back to the hotel and barely made it in time for dinner and departure for our overnight train back to Cairo!

The overnight train wasn’t quite as bad as I thought it would be, but I still barely slept. Those little rooms can get kind of stuffy. Oh well. The trip definitely wasn’t about getting sleep!

I’ll write more later!

-Audryn-