Day Two

The first part of Day Two started in the train station followed by a 1am train ride to Luxor. This was an over-night ride so not the most comfortable, although we did spring for 1st class tickets. Really, we were all so worn out I don't think any of us had a hard time sleeping. We woke in the morning not far from our stop in Luxor and readied ourselves to head straight to our hotel.

We freshened up and then headed out to our first stop--an amazing seafood restaurant. We live in MD so we know a thing or two about Blue Crabs and the crabs we had here were better than any I've tasted. We also had bbq bolti which I'd had a few times in Alexandria but these were twice as big and much easier to peel and eat. We got an order of bbq shrimp as well. All of this to feed 6 people and 2 kids for about $30.
After we all stuffed ourselves we made our way to the Karnak. We arrived a little too early in the day and found that a night show was scheduled for later in the evening and that night happened to be the Arabic night (each day of the weak they gave the night tour in a different language). We checked out the Karnak museum and found a train used for archaeological excavations that was made in Denver--small world I guess.

To fill more time before the show we found a taxi driver to drive us around for a few hours to do some museum hopping. We saw the Luxor museum--perhaps the best Egyptian museum as is housed more detailed artifacts than what we saw in the Egyptian museum in Cairo--and the Mummification museum--also neat but I missed much of this as Roqaya was done with that day and not happy about being out any more. From this point on, through the rest of the trip she would let only me carry her when she didn't want to walk anymore (as I mentioned before, strollers and most of Egypt don't mix, so we didn't bring it).

We still had a little time to kill before it got dark so we found a little restaurant with outdoor seating on the bank of the Nile. We weren't really hungry so we ordered ice cream and enjoyed the fresh air and dusk views.
Our timing was perfect and we made it back to the Karnak just before the night show began. This was one of my favorite parts of the trip even though the presentation was in Arabic and I used a portable radio with the English translation of the show that kept switching to other languages and sometimes Christmas music.

Material for these pillars and the rest of the Karnak were transported from the West bank of the Nile.