Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Luxor, Egypt

We had a little time to explore the town of Esna on our own. I decided to leave my bag behind in the room since we would not be gone too long. We saw the temple here from the outside but did not pay the admission fee. There were some great street shots of the town. When I returned to my room I found that it had been locked by the housekeeper and I asked him to open it. He tried his master key and it didn't work. The duplicate key at the desk was tried and it didn't work either. The manager of the ship and several others tried as well. The finally had to call maintainence and someone came and removed the whole lock.

We set sail from the town of Esna and shortly afterward entered the Esna Lock. I was sitting right in the front of the ship and thus had a bird's eye view. When I returned to my room, my lock was fixed. He had quite a bit of time on board today as we sailed the 5 ½ hours to Luxor.

The sites just keep getting bigger and better. This afternoon we visited Luxor Temple with its huge statues. We were really lucky that at 3 p.m. the time of our visit, it was overcast and so we did not have the intense heat as we had yesterday.

We also visited the Papyrus Institute and learned how the papyrus is made. I bout a couple of pieces tat I hope Pat will like. On the way back to our ship we passed a wedding procession headed by a band and followed by about 50 horse-drawn carriages. It was interesting and reminded me of the Tanzanian wedding we had attended.

We had a chance to grab a quick shower before our complimentary Farewell Cocktail. During the day they hung 20 numbered socks and by feel we had to guess what was in them. I was the winner guessing 17 of them. My prize was another free cocktail of my choice.

This was the Farewell Dinner night and we were served an excellent and interesting meal. The lights were dimmed as everyone was served their main course. On each plate was a colored bell pepper that contained a lit candle inside. It almost looked as if though everyone had a jack-o-lantern on their plate. For dessert, the lights were again dimmed and we were served Baked Alaska.

We were then instructed to go upstairs to the lounge for a Folkloric show. Upon exiting the dining room, our housekeeper had arranged towels into many great formations. I hope my photos of this turned out.

I had charged my video camera to take the show which was not much of a show but different. There were two different "Whirling dervishes" in colorful outfits.