The Luxor Museum and the West Bank

On Saturday morning, we went to the Luxor Museum in a cab driven by Ahmed Mohamed Ali (How's that for a Muslim name?) who became our driver for the rest of our time in Luxor. The Luxor Museum doesn't look like much on the outside, and it's much smaller than the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but it was much more organized, and everything had plaques to tell you what was what. Included in the displays are about 12 beautiful statues, a golden cow's head from King Tut's tomb, and three mummies. Unfortunately, cameras aren't allowed inside.

We spent the rest of the day at the hotel, napping, swimming, etc. We ate dinner at the poolside restaurant that night. The kids loved the chicken nuggets, and we loved the atmosphere.

On Sunday morning, Ahmed took us to the West Bank for a quick tour. We didn't make it to the Valley of the Kings (not worth it with the strollers, and it was too hot to be outside that long), but we saw a lot anyway. First, we stopped for some pictures of the Colossi of Memnon.



After driving by Deir El-Bahari, which is a very impressive sight--take a look at the link, we went to an alabaster factory, where they showed us how they hand-carve alabaster.
The babies playing with alabaster eggs at the factory. Ahmed is holding Nicky.Then, we went to Medinet Habu, a temple mostly built by Ramses III. It was the first ruins that we were able to go into in Egypt, and we were appropriately awed by it. It was beautiful.

Don't be fooled by the scale of the above picture. These things are huge. Look for the babies in their strollers at the statue's feet in this picture:The ceilings still have paint on them after all these years. Amazing!
After our tour, we headed back to the poolside restaurant, but it wasn't as nice during the day. There was no wind to keep the flies away.

More temples tomorrow.... :)