Up the Nile! On a three-hour train ride where we bought tickets on the train. It wasn't full, so we hopped on and bought "standing" tickets for the ride, which were half the price of normal tickets. Still, we got seats. (Remember this for later.)
Upon arriving in Luxor, we cabbed to our hotel. If you're ever in Luxor...STAY HERE.
It's called the Bob Marley Hotel...12 LE per night, a rooftop lounge, and Bob Marley everywhere. The guy at the desk got us a nice deal on a driver around Luxor for the next day, and also promised to get us tickets for the ride back to Cairo while we were out sightseeing. (Also remember this for later.)
The next day we were up early to do a blitz of as many Luxor temples as possible. After stocking up on fool and falafel at a street place, our driver took us to destination 1:
The Valley of the Kings
Many of ancient Egypt's pharaohs, mostly from the New Kingdom period, are buried here. They decided to move their burial sites to the valley after all the embarrassing robberies of bodies and treasure from the somewhat less-subtle Pyramids at Giza and Saqqara. Valleys are much easier to defend from tomb robbers, right?
Wrong. The tombs still ended up being robbed. In some cases robberies even happened soon after the king was buried there. This is because unlike the policies of other ancient civilizations in China or Mexico, the Egyptians didn't kill the architects and builders of their tombs after the tombs were finished. Basically a hopeful tomb robber would go up to one of these people (could also be a guard, or anyone who has some knowledge of the layout of the tomb and its potential entrances), and he'd offer to give the guy a cut of his "earnings" if he helps him out with getting in. This happened disturbingly often, and it's why we have so few incomplete tombs nowadays.
Anyway, the authorities can fine you an obscene amount of money if you get caught taking pictures inside the tombs, so be content with the above Google map. The humidity in the first tomb we entered, about 100 feet underground, was like DC but in the Jurassic Period. So much that when we emerged into the 105-degree sunlight it actually felt cool.
After Valley of the Kings, it was time for Hatshepsut's temple.
Onward to Medinet Habu, one of my personal favorites.
To verify their enemy casualties, the Egyptian soldiers would bring back wagonloads of heads or...well, you can figure it out from the picture, given the Egyptian obsession with humiliating the enemy in most painful way.
...yeah, it's a battle. Remember this for later.
We wanted lunch, so our driver tried to figure out where we should best go. He first stopped at a hilariously overpriced place in downtown Luxor where he was friends with the manager. We left rather quickly and tried the place across the street, which didn't look open since it was Friday. The broken English the guy spoke there seemed to mean that we could sit down and have lunch, but the fact that they literally had no other customers and would have to make us food special seemed somewhat sketchy. We exited, and the owner followed us, offering to take us to another place that was open. He stopped at a European-style restaurant with a minimum charge of 100 LE per person. Not another one! Luckily, our driver had been looking for us after he noticed we weren't in the second place anymore, and he drove up just as we were about to go inside and get ripped off yet again. This daring rescue earned him major points. We told him we'd just get koshary, but he seemed to really want us to spend some serious money since the next place he took us was to a buffet restaurant full of European tourists. Probably the same ones who were willing to buy a can of beer for 13 Euros at Abu Simbel. Knowing this was not good, I subtracted his points and told him to take us to koshary NOW.
Good old Egyptian food. Not great, but not pricey, either. Final stop: Karnak, the largest temple in Egypt. It's the big brown square north of downtown Luxor on the map below, so you can get some idea of its size.
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