Day
16 - Luxor : Temple of Luxor, Mosque and MacDonald's
We started late to accomodate Friday Prayers
and also because we would be with the guide and driver until
late in the evening as they would take us to catch our train
to Cairo.
View from the 2nd floor at McDonalds
next to Luxor Temple
 We
went to lunch at McDonald's. The local McDonald's is located
across the street from the Luxor Temple, on the same side as
the plaza in front of the Mosque of Sheikh Yusuf al-Haggag.
The daytime view was good, but I have been told that the nighttime
view is magically as you overlook the lighted temple. I can
believe it, because one night we walked out to try to find
the MacDonalds and ended up on the other side of the Luxor
Temple and the lighted temple at night is lovely. While we
were out that night we learned a bit about crossing the Corniche.
You do it very carefully... and there are crosswalks of a sort
with lights that show how many seconds the traffic is supposed
to stay stopped. So you could watch them warily while you crossed.
It also helped to be at an intersection where a traffic cop
was working.
We weren't really bothered too much as we walked
along. One boy stopped us to buy some Papyrus bookmarks,
which I did and another boy was begging. The second boy had
come across the street from a group of boys and was trying
out his English plea of poverty. It is really hard to tell
whether he needed alms or not, but in the end we just gave
him EP5 or 10 and no one else approached us. We were passed
by what must have been a large group of courting young men
and women who were sort of together, but not coupled off, and
were heading to the Temple. I say they were courting because
there was a lot of giggling going on, but they could have just
been a group of older teenagers dressed up for some function.
At any rate they went inside the grounds of the Luxor Temple.
Anyway during Lunch the guide stepped out to arrange a carriage
ride at twilight. Ken wanted to ride out into the countryside
as we had done once on our last trip. After we finished eating,
we walked over to the Mosque and Hossam, our guide gave us
a tour of the inside of the mosque and the Saint's memorial.
He showed us where the actual Luxor Temple columns are built
into the Mosque. The history of this is that in 900 AD xxxx
the holy man came to Luxor from Cairo to convert the local
population. This is significant in that the Muslem religion
was brought by Arabs to Cairo an the delta in around 650 AD.
So 300 hundred years later Islam was slowly spreading up the
Nile. Anyhow, at that time there was a village built over the
half buried Luxor Temple, and the situation remained the same
until the later part of the 1800's. So the site of a mosque
was established and it has been kept there. It has been modernized
over time and coexists quite well with the tourist site. It
is often the case that sites used by one religion are then
appropirated by a more recent religion. Some say that certain
spots are just more spiritual that others, who knows, could
be.
Mosque of Sheikh Yusuf al-Haggag
After visiting the mosque we had a thorough tour of the
Temple of Luxor. It is a smaller site than Karnak, and can
be well covered in 3 or four hours.
There are two interesting restorations in The Temple of Luxor.
In one wall the reliefs that have become damaged are being
sketched in to show the outlines of what they were before the
salt and other types of damage affected them. And in the back,
some of the Christian paintings have been restored.
We visited the bookstore on the way out and bought a book
by the American University at Cairo called "Egypt Today
and Yesterday" which has colored overlays for scenes such
as the Festival Hall at Karnak to show how they looked when
they were intact.
We took the carriage ride out to the Movenpick Jolie and then
through the village streets of Luxor. Large numbers of tourists
are driven out into the villages by horse and carrage each
evening. We saw them from our window at the hotel. I am not
sure what the villagers think of this, but you do get a realistic
look at how some of the villagers live. Egypt is like all countries,
there are rich and poor areas. The people in the Luxor countryside
reminded me of sharecropping families in the South in the 50's.
They had the basic necessities, but were living more like
farming villages all over the world.
 After
the carriage ride we stopped for diner the Jamboree Restaurant
(delicious food!) where our guide had worked during his student
days. Then we walked through the newly refurbished market.
Ken bargained for an inlaid box and I bargained for a few scarves.
We had coffee at an open air coffee restaurant and waited until
it was time to go to the train station.
At the train station
having a guide really paid off, it was not at all clear where
we were to wait and there was a specific spot on the platform
for boarding the sleeper train. But the biggest possibility
for error was the regular train that came through 20 minutes
ahead of the sleeper. If you didn't know better, you could
have easily tried to get on that one! Once on the sleeper
train we were on familiar territory. All the luggage was jammed
into the cabin which had a sink only. The toilets were down
the carriage. We told the conductor we were getting out at
Giza and he popped down the two beds. He offered dinner, but
we had already eaten, so I can't tell you what that might have
been. He easily rearranged our four pieces of luggage to
get to the mechanisms for the bed and they were clean and comfortable.
I like sleeping on a train, and trains in general, so I enjoyed
the ride.
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