Our trip to Luxor and Aswan: the full story

We went on our trip to Upper Egypt with one other family; friends we’ve met here in Egypt. The father is also a philosophy professor, the mother a literature professor, and they have 2 girls, 5 and 10 years old. It was great to travel with friends. Not only were we able to share a lot of the costs, e.g. taxi fares, but also the four kids always had each other for entertainment during quiet time or while traveling.

Day 1: From Cairo to Luxor, visiting Karnak, Luxor temple and Luxor museum
We were picked up by university transport at 5 am on Friday morning. The airport transport and the flight to Luxor, as well as the transfer to the hotel went very well. We were checked in and ready to take on the sites by 9 am but decided to have breakfast first. Movenpick has the most fantastic breakfast buffet and we filled up anticipating a long day ahead of us. After breakfast we went straight to Karnak. It’s amazing how it’s right there; a short ride past the Luxor temple in the center of Luxor and Karnak, one of the most remarkable temples ever built appears. We got out of the taxi behind all the tourist buses parked in front of the temple site, and got tickets to enter. Built over a period of 1300 years, “Karnak beats every other pharaonic monument bar the Pyramids of Giza”, our Rough Guide to Egypt had informed us, and it really was an astonishing temple. There’s so much knowledge within those ancient blocks of stone, it was impossible to take it all in; I lost myself the first 10 minutes and totally forgot to take pictures.

After 2 hours at Karnak we went back to the hotel for a break. Courtney took a nap and the rest of us hung out by the ‘beach pool’, the perfect water place for kids with a waterslide, fountains, tunnels and a waterfall. It was warmer in Luxor than in Cairo, and the temperature difference allowed us to enjoy the pool and the sun for a couple of hours. After a quick shower we went back into town to catch Luxor temple before sundown. The sun set while we were in there, and Luxor temple as well, was truly amazing. After the temple we went looking for a restaurant and didn’t find the two mentioned by the Rough Guide, but settled for a small outdoor setting that proved to be pretty bad, actually. Small portions of grilled meat and kochery, strange pizza, an even stranger hamburger and an infinite amount of waiting later, our accompanying family went back to the hotel and we proceeded by horse and carriage to the Luxor museum. After a short struggle with the entrance fee – it was quite expensive – we saw one of the most amazing exhibitions ever. The Egyptian museum in Cairo is fantastic, and of course the Luxor museum only had a tiny collection in comparison, but it was very nicely displayed. We saw a lot of the objects found in the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, a couple of the original tomb architectural blue prints (or ‘carvings’, rather, since they were stone plates), as well as two mummies and the weapons, a chariot, furniture and other things found in Tutankhamon’s tomb.

We stayed at the museum until closing time (9 pm) and after a short taxi ride back to the hotel, went straight to sleep.

Day 2: Colossi of Memnon, Valley of the Kings, Deir el-Bahri and the Ramesseum
After having eaten as much breakfast as we possibly could, again anticipating a long day without possibilities to buy extra food or drinks, we set off for the Valley of the Kings first, hitting the Colossi of Memnon on our way there.


At the Valley of the Kings, the tomb of Seti I was closed, but we got to see the tombs of Ramses VI (fantastic wall carvings), Tutankhamon (with the mummy still there), Tuthmosis III (getting there was a climbing exercise indeed! and the tomb itself was interesting), Ramses I and one more which I think might have been Amenotheb II. The boys liked Tutankhamon’s tomb the best because of the mummy, but personally I enjoyed Ramses VI and Tuthmosis III the most. Again my Rough Guide to Egypt proved to be a treasure with very good descriptions of everything from ticket purchasing to historical descriptions of the tombs.

After the Valley of the Kings we continued to Deir el-Bahri where we admired the Mortuary temple of Hatshepsut (the queen pharaoh), where 58 tourists and four guards were shot and stabbed to death by Islamite extremists in November 1997.

In addition to the above sites we had also planned to visit Medinet Habu and the Ramesseum, but some of the kids were getting very tired, so we settled for the Ramesseum only, which was an amazing site. Not only did we have it all to ourselves, but as if the magnificent statues by Ramses II weren’t enough, there was also a Roman excavation site right behind it.

By the time we got back to the hotel it was late afternoon and we hurried over to the pool for a couple of hours play before sun set. We then hung out in our rooms, took bubble baths and relaxed, getting ready for our flight to Aswan in the morning.

Day 3: from Luxor to Aswan, and the Island of Philae
We stayed at the New Cataract in Aswan, and even though the breakfast buffet was nothing like the buffet at hotel Movenpick in Luxor, and even though the pool was only a regular pool and didn’t have a special kids’ area, I liked this hotel better; a lot owing to the fact that is was less than half the price we had paid in Luxor, but also the rooms were bigger and the view was astounding!

After arriving in Aswan we spent a couple of hours relaxing at the hotel, and then we went out for lunch at Emy, a restaurant recommended by our Rough Guide to Egypt. The beer was only 6 EGP, the food was cheap, but we had to wait for quite a while, and we didn’t get very much. It was good though. After lunch we went by taxi and then by boat to visit the Island of Philae with its magnificent Temple of Isis, Temple of Hathor and Temple of Augustus, which August of course found very interesting. It was a beautiful ride out there, and the site was very well preserved.


After Philae we had had a play in the pool, went out to dinner and then visited the market for a while. The merchants were a lot more aggressive here than in Cairo or even Luxor, almost to the point where we were not enjoying the shopping, but there were some very beautiful things. I especially enjoyed the spices, and bought a 3 feet long cinnamon stick that turned out to be the best cinnamon I’ve ever tasted.

Day 4: Abu Simbel
This entire day was dedicated to one site only: Abu Simbel. We were picked up by a Thomas Cook Travels van in the morning, and then rode the 3 ½ hours south through the desert in an escorted convoy. The boys slept or listened to music most of the way, and everyone else read. As we approached Abu Simbel, the landscape changed, and our first sight of Lake Nasser was breathtaking. Our guidebook told us “The great Sun Temple of Abu Simbel epitomizes the monumentalism of the New Kingdom during its imperial heyday, when Ramses II waged colonial wars from the Beka’a valley in Lebanon to the Fourth Cataract. To impress his power and majesty on the Nubians, Ramses had four gigantic statues of himself hewn from the mountainside, whence his unblinking stare confronted travelers as they entered Egypt from Africa.” It was indeed as amazing as it sounds. We had a very good guide at Abu Simbel and it was certainly worth the drive. Not only are the temples very well preserved, but also the site is beautiful, and the history behind it all is amazing.

On our way back to Aswan, we watched the sun set behind us: nothing but desert, a straight road, and a big red sun setting in the horizon; it was beautiful! The philosophy professors played a self-made-up game “name a philosopher”, which proved to be quite difficult after all the obvious and even not so obvious ones already were named. It was dark when we got back and we went straight to a restaurant for dinner. The food in Aswan was a lot better in general than in Luxor, very cheap, and we ate at least two restaurants I would recommend. After another last visit to the market with the overly aggressive sales merchants, exhausted, we went to bed.

Day 5: Nubia museum, pool and then back to Cairo
I didn’t have much energy left on this our last day of the trip, so while ‘the daddies’ went to visit the Nubia museum (which was very nice apparently) in the morning, the moms hung out with the kids around the pool. The hotel manager let us check out and still use the pool, which was very convenient. It was nice to relax, swim and play, and we had a quick lunch downtown before going back to the airport for our flight home. While waiting to board our plane, we tried buying candy bars in the kiosk by the gate, however a Mars bar was a whopping 35 EGP so we contained ourselves. I talked to the guy in the kiosk for a while and when he heard we work for the American University in Cairo, he gave me a 50% discount on my bottle of water, but added that the candy bars were a different category and very closely monitored, so he couldn’t help me there.

I enjoyed Nubia very much. Culturally and historically it was a very interesting experience: People were and looked a bit different from in Cairo, and as artificial as Lake Nasser might be, it’s a beautiful area. We didn’t see half of all the things we wanted to see in Luxor, but we’ll be here in Egypt for another 2 ½ years and will go back.