Boarding our charter flight in the morning for a relaxing day in Cairo… at least for us,  as we have no excursions planned.

Our last night,  or half a night,  since we leave for the airport at 3 AM for our next segment of the tour, Jordan and Petra.

We have had a fabulous program director / Egyptologist, Mohamed Samy.  He has been a wealth of knowledge and offered us the best experience at each stop is our journey.  

We had the afternoon to ourselves too relax and enjoy the Intercontinental Hotel and The large City Stars Mall attached.   We both decided a hair cut would be a nice way to freshen up. 

Our last buffet dinner was in the hotel.  Here are a few of the egyptian dishes.

This temple,  half way between Aswan and Cairo, is by far the largest and most complete of all the temples we have visited.   It is Amazingly intact!  A temple to Horus, the falcon God.  120′ tall, 160′ long, it took 180 years to build finished in about 57 BC.

Statutes of Horus

A copy of Horus’s boat was constructed in the 19th c

Inside of the hall of columns and the inner sanctuary

I am intrigued by the deep relief carvings of the different animal hyroglyphics

Of course we had to visit a papyrus gallery.  They showed how the plant was used to make the papyrus, by squeezing our the liquid and sugars,  soaking for 6 to 12 days and then pressing. The stripes are them laid,  cross each other, to make the sheets.  There are more now than just the traditional designs of ancient Egyptian gods ,  with lovely water color paintings

It was interesting to see 1 more temple site saved from the Nile flooding of the old dam  built in 1902.  This site was raised in 1972 to 1980.   40,000 blocks of stone were cut and placed on another higher island in the Nile.   Philae Temple was later used as a church,  so you can see cruises inside

Aswan is on the Nubian area of Africa,  on the southern gate of the Nile and Egypt.  we took a boat ride to visit a typical family home,  3 generations living together.  

The view from the roof showed the layout of the house and the village.   The woven mats make a roof.   There is no rain here at all.

Aswan is on the Nubian area of Africa,  on the southern gate of the Nile and Egypt.  we took a boat ride to visit a typical family home,  3 generations living together.  

The view from the roof showed the layout of the house and the village.   The woven mats make a roof.   There is no rain here at all.

One of the most incredible ancient sights in Egypt is Abu Simbel, 2 temples saved from the flooding by the High Dam st Aswan in the 60s.  An amazing feat of engineering created a new rock mountain and moved the temples 68′ status of Ramses II and his wife Nefertari 60′ higher and 300′ back from the flood! 20,000 blocks of the temple mountain were cut and moved in order to accomplish this!

Inside the temple all the columns and reliefs were saved.  

The smaller temple was Nefertari’s temple

Viking traditionally has a night with Egyptian dress,  food, and  Nubian entertainers.  Mostly they commandiered tourists to entertain! 

The dancers entertainment

Even more entertainment

There is a beautifully colored temple here is Esna, the reason for the stop here.  It is from the Greco Roman period.  There is a team from Germany working of restoring the color,  cleaning off millenia of dirt and soot. 

They have finished the inside and out in amazingly beautiful!  Each column on the Hall of columns has a different capital!

Colors restored on wall motifs

Esna is also one of the places where alabaster is hand carved and is something i wanted as a souvenir from this trip to Egypt.  I found a lovely example,  a small cup I can put a tea light in,  with much character! 

The rest of our day today,  we sail farther upstream toward Aswan.

A highlight of Egypt is visiting the tombs in the Valley of the Kings.   After the pyramid tombs of the early kingdom were robbed, over and over,  the kings of the new kingdom decided to try another tactic and hide their burial places to keep them intact.   They searched for a location in the desert, desolate and dry to protect their precious it

ems and preserve their bodies for the next life.  They choose the location under a mountain that looks like a pyramid

We saw 4 tombs,  the first and most famous,  that of Tutankhamon

Ramses IX, a very colorful tomb as well,  still bright colors after 3300 years

The most amazing was the tomb of Seti I

The last was tomb of Tutmosis III