Egypt Trip - Day One

Collosei of Memnon, Valley of the Kings and Deir el-Bahri

The trip down from Edinburgh to Gatwick and then Gatwick to Luxor went smoothly and we arrived a bit earlier than scheduled. OMG Luxor Airport had changed a lot since my last visit - it now has a terminal and everything!!

Early start the first morning and a pretty full day. Started off with a quick visit to the Collosei of Memnon. These are 2 huge statues which have each been carved from one piece of stone. We didn't get long at them - about 20 mins or so as there is nothing else there apart from the 2 statues - we had a walk around them and took plenty of photos.

After that stop it was off to the Valley of the Kings. We visited 3 tombs; the first one was Tutmoses III, which had a LOT of steps - glad we did it first (see photo to right). After that we went to Ramses III (I think - neither Stewart nor I can quite remember), finishing off in Ramses IV. The only downside of the visit was that no photography is permitted inside the tombs, although we did buy a really nice set of photos. After the Valley of the Kings we went to an alabastor factory, but tbh it all seemed a bit false and most of the stuff they had for sale wasn't hand-made.

Then we moved onto Queen Hatshepsut's Temple at Deir el-Bahri and boy, was it getting warm by then. The temple was very different to the others we would be visiting on our trip, but very impressive. Another hefty step climb (we could certainly feel our legs for the next few days - even Stu who walks to work every day). The veiw from the top tier was fantastic and some of the statues and wall carvings were really lovely.

After the temple it was back to the boat for lunch then a free afternoon as we set sail for Edfu. Sunset is pretty early this time of year so we only managed about an hour and a half of relaxing in the sun in the afternoon. I've put a photo of some of the statues in Hetshepsut's Temple below: