Luxor

We took a 10 hour train ride south along the Nile to Luxor, which has been inhabited for 6000 years! It was the capital for much of Pharonic rule and was also the center of religious and ceremonical life in ancient Egypt. It has the most preverved ancient monuments - King Tut's tomb was found here. There's the Valley of the Kings, where many of the tombs of the Pharoah are still in tact - we walked down into 3 of them, amazing tunnels into the heart of the mountains covered in heiroglyphics. There are several temples constructed for various pharoahs for themselves and the gods - we visited Hatshepsut's (the famous woman pharoah), Ramses II's, and Amenhotep II's (called Luxor temple).

And then there's the amazing Karnak temple, our favorite site. It wasn't so much a temple as a complex - it measures about 1 mile by 800 meters. Each successive pharoah would add to the place and try to outdo each other. We just couldn't capture the scale in pictures! There are multiple sanctuaries within it. The most amazing part was the Great Hypostyle Hall - a forest of 134 towering stone pillars, bigger than both St. Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's in London combined!

Beyond the monuments and the history, we enjoyed spending time in a smaller town on the banks of the Nile, with more horses than cars and farmland full of sugarcane.