After a good night's sleep on the train (it was surprisingly relaxing sleeping in the beds on the train), we arrived at Luxor at 6am. We went straight to the hotel, pretty tired after the 4am wake up call, and we were told there was a problem with the rooms - as in, there weren't any. Then we discovered that no, this was just the famous Egyptian sense of humour, and our tour leader thought it was just hilarious to pretend that there were no rooms. Not sure that anyone found that particularly amusing at that time of morning, but at least he thought he was funny. Eventually we got into our rooms, and I have to say the quality comparison from the Zoser to this was quite stunning - the room was filthy, and the bathroom was very special.....Anyway, we got some washing done (and cleaned the room a bit) and burned some CDs to free up room on our memory cards - the Apacer Disc Steno portable CD burner was an excellent device - and played DVD's, so we watched "The Mummy" (what else!) while we waited for the breakfast buffet to open.
After breakfast we had yet another interminable meeting, this one where the tour leader bored us to death for over two hours about jewellery purchasing - I'm sure if any of us had the slightest inclination to buy any we might have been interested, but it was deathly dull, and quite frankly I did not come back to Egypt to hang around in hotel lobbies for hours on end (that's my little whinge! Even this long after it still annoys me.....). Anyway, Tamz eventually got fed of me being fed up and asked if we could leave, so we escaped. Luckily, I remembered a lot about Luxor from the previous trip, and we had a great time wandering around the streets down to the Corniche. Met up with the others at noon, at (wait for it!) a "recommended" jewellery shop! The guys all looked bored out of their skulls, but some of the women were shopping. Anyway, we then got into our carriages for the ride to the Temple of Amun at Karnak.
Karnak at midday was still beautiful, but also possibly the worst time of day to be there - it was baking hot and really uncomfortable. Mustafa (our guide) luckily realised we were all suffering and tried to find shade as much as possible. I have to say at this point I was wishing I'd booked with Imaginative Traveller - at least they were smart and took us out in the early morning when the heat wasn't so unbearable. Tamz's watch showed a temp of 44 celsius.
Back to the hotel and most people either slept or hung out at the pool for the afternoon. That evening, Tamz and I went to Luxor Temple. It was absolutely beautiful at night, the lighting was great.
