Egypt (Safaga, Luxor, and Paradise Island)

Our next port was Safaga, Egypt.  We took a 3.5 hour bus ride to Luxor, aka Thebes.  The Valley of the Kings can be found here.  The Valley of the Kings is just what it sounds like, where all the kings were buried after death.  The tombs were extravagant because they believed that the treasures in the tombs would be waiting on them as they returned in the afterlife.  

The hieroglyphics in the tombs were amazing...they were so colorful still after thousands of years...how do colors from nature stay around that long?  The beliefs they had about death and the afterlife, the angels and justice, these were all written in the tombs.  The tombs had to take forever to carve out and write and color, I have no idea how people just didn't give up.  I guess they didn't have much else to do but still such hard work and in the heat...oh, the heat! 

Luxor was much cleaner then Cairo, although still dirty and dusty.  The people were more countryside and less modern, especially in dress.  Almost every house had a donkey out front and every donkey was trying it’s hardest to get into whatever shade it could.  Again, the heat!

     

The vendors apparently had heard of ‘happy hour’, although I don’t think they quite grasp the concept of an hour considering it was happy hour all day long.  They also didn't grasp that happy hour usually means drinks/food.  They were selling trinkets for “Happy Hour” and they would all be yelling "happy hour here".

This is the Valley of the Kings

Inside the Valley, no pictures allowed...I snapped this one quickly.  These are the entrances to the tombs.

Karnak Temple was also on today's tour and wow!  Magnificent, you can read about it here.

 you can still see some color

After touring Cairo and Luxor, which required so much time and walking and time and walking, we/I decided it was time for a rest and relaxation beach excursion.  So where else would one go when there is such a thing called Paradise Island?  of course, one would choose Paradise Island.  It sounds so beautiful and relaxing and beautiful.

This is Paradise Island in Egypt.

Although it looks like that, it was still an awesome day of snorkeling, napping, and napping!  The water was so wonderfully clear.  The reefs were good size and there was plenty of sea life of the coast of this island with no life.  No one inhabited this island, everyone was transported there by boat daily...however to my surprise there was running water!!  It was an adventure for sure when we realized we had to get off this boat

 where I can sit like this

and onto this boat to actually put our feet on the sand.

But other people are doing it too.  Now we sit/stand like these people.

Luckily for us, we are young and capable.  However, we had many older folks and even a handicapped man on board.  This was a constant on our trip and the people amazed me daily on how much they were willing to do...walk for miles, take a boat to an island in a wheelchair, climb stairs.  These are things I hope I am willing and able to do when I reach their age.  They made is look easy for the most part.

 Because I love taking pictures of emergency vehicles in other countries, this obsession also applies to animals, (the big in the states they are blue) mailboxes, and other random things.  It funny to me how things look so different in other countries...however I guess animals look the same everywhere, maybe I just love animals!

They had McDelivery...so did Dubai and Singapore, bizarre!

Davis snorkeling

 ah, what a great day