Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Workers, and Leaving Luxor

We said goodbye to our cruise ship yesterday morning, and I am now in Alexandria, on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt.

We woke up yesterday in Luxor at 4:00 AM to catch our donkeys to the Valley of the Kings. The donkeys were lots of fun. They're a lot smaller than horses, and your feet are only a little big over the ground. However, as small as they are they go a lot faster than you would think. We bounced around on them for about an hour as we headed to the Valley of the Kings.

The Valley of the Kings is the site of about 10 Pharoh's graves, including Tutankhamen. You climb down very intricate walls with heiroglyphics and see the amazingly decorated tombs. The temperature. The weather yesterday easily reached into the 100s again, so we decided not to continue on with the donkeys after 9AM.

We continued by Air Conditioned bus to the Valley of the workers. Here, the graves are not as ornate and you have to climb down very narrow passages to see the graves, but it is still amazing to see what a "regular citizen" in ancient Egypt would have been buried in.

Unfortunately, our tour ended after this morning, and some of the group continued onto a beach town on the Red Sea called Hurgada. Me, Debi and 2 others had to catch an overnight train back to Cairo, however for the rest of the day we got day-use rooms in a local hotel. It had a nice rooftop and a swimming pool, it was great to work on my tan.

Back to the overnight train - ugh. We dreaded the bathrooms, so i tried to not drink too much before the trip. Additionally, we all took a local drug called Anti-Nol, it calms your stomach so you don't have to go as often. All 12 of us on the trip got a case of Traveller's Diarrhea over the past few days.