My Solo Trip To Egypt: Luxor

I traveled to Luxor for a full day tour on Christmas day, I booked my tour on ‘get your guide’ which is honestly a great app. I have used it in Venice, Munich and Luxor and each time everything went off without a hitch. I will link the tour I done in case you want to check it out. It was honestly excellent and I would highly recommend it. We covered all the major things to do and our guide was really well informed on Egypt and explained different hieroglyphs, rulers through history, politics and myths.

https://www.getyourguide.com/hurghada-l403/valley-of-the-kings-luxor-day-trip-from-hurghada-t22357/

I was picked up from my accommodation in Hurghada at 5am and we then drove for around 4 hours until we got to Karnak temple. Our guide had our tickets and just handed them out as we got to each place which was really handy as everything we done that day was included in the price. Karnak temple was amazing, there were so many pillars and they were so much bigger than I had expected. There were also hieroglyphs everywhere and they were in such good condition too, it was had to imagine that they were actually thousands of years old. Our guide told us really interesting story’s about the people that were depicted on the walls especially the one about Omar! He also told us about a queen of Egypt, Hatshepsut, who wasn’t allowed to rule because she was a woman so she married to her half-brother, however her brother was weak and eventually died and she refused to pass on her power to her husbands son. She went to the priests and convinced them she was a man and dressed like a man from that day forth, she also continued to rule for another 30 years. When her son in law came to power he destroyed all of her temples, tombs and anything that made reference to her except for a obelisk that she dedicated to his father, but he built a wall around it. It wasn’t until a 1000 years later when the wall fell down that Queen Hatshepsut was remembered.

Once we had finished in Karnak temple we went a papyrus work shop, papyrus is one of, if not the first paper to exist. In the shop we were shown how the paper was and is still to this day made and we were also shown how to tell if it is real or fake. We then went to a port and got a boat ride on the Nile it was round a half hour long, it was really calming and its great to be able to say I have been on the Nile. It stopped near another port which was right next to a restaurant we were having lunch at, lunch was a buffet and was also included in the tour. The food was great and it was a nice way to talk to the other people on the tour there were 5 others, 2 Americans, 2 Romanians and a guy from Denmark. They were all lovely and nice company to be in.

After lunch we went to the valley of kings, from the outside it just looks like sandy mountains but as you get closer you start to see the entrance ways of the tombs. With the ticket for the valley of the kings you can enter 3 tombs we saw Ramses the 2^nd and 7^th tombs and I cant remember or find the name of the 3^rd tomb I was in, they were all amazing. When you think that some of those tombs are over 3000 years old and the colours on the wall are still so vibrant its just mind blowing. The tombs were also so much bigger than I had expected the hallways are huge and really long. Do your research for which tomb you will visit before you go because some require a lot of climbing or are really deep so you will need to be fairly fit.

We then went to Hatshepsut temple which was one of the places I really wanted to go. I love the way it looks the straight lines and archways it reminds me of Georgian architecture which I absolutely love. There were also hieroglyphics and painting in this temple too which I wasn’t expecting. The statues on the front of the temple were impressive and were still in great condition. When we finished looking around the temple we were brought to a local alabaster work shop we were given tea and showed how the stone is carved and hollowed and shown what tools they use. I really enjoyed it there, their work was beautiful and I bought a few pieces.

It is one of the weirdest but amazing Christmas days I’ve ever had, I thoroughly enjoyed the tour and was glad I got to spend it with people from all over the world. If you are in Egypt Luxor is an absolute must!