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Cool statues in Luxor.

Nefertari's tomb in Valley of the Queens.

Alabaster factory and a coke.

Today is our last day of the cruise. We sailed early this morning to Luxor, where we will be exploring so many of the great things here! We started on the West Bank, with the Valley of the Queens. Talk about another dream come true!! We went inside a temple for a young boy-king, QV55 Prince Amun-her-khepeshef, son of Ramesses III (It was in the Queen's Valley because he was still a child when he died.) It had been so beautifully preserved... the color on the walls were incredible! The drawings depicted the incredible short life of this young king. All together, the Queens' Valley holds more than 70 burial tombs, including that of Queen Nefertari. I was really bummed that her tomb was closed for restoration. I've been readingand historical fiction book called, "The Heretic Queen" that is all about Nefertari's rise to the Queen of Pharoah Ramesses. (Its an excellent book, and we got to see in person so many of the places in the book!) We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the tombs, so I took one outside, by Nefertari's tomb. Just knowing that the ancient royal families walked amongst these rocks and tombs, as they came to bury their loved ones was incredible.

After that, we headed to the Valley of the Kings. Again, a dream come true to be in this place. Here, we weren't even allowed to take our cameras off the bus. A definite bummer, but necessary to preserve the amazing ancient wonders in this place. We visited 4 tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Though this is where King Tut's tomb is, we did not visit that one... it was an extra cost, and didn't really have much to see-- all the treasures had been moved to the Cairo museum. So we opted to pay to see a different tomb, the tomb of King Ramesses IV/V. It was originally began for RIV, but he died before it was finished so ultimately, it was the burial tomb for RV. It has been deemed the "Egyptian Sistine Chapel." When our guide told us this, I was skeptical. I've seen the Sistine Chapel, and while the Egyptian art is incredible, I have always been unwaveringly dedicated to Michelango-era Italian art. So I was interested to see how this would compare. Let me tell you... I was BLOWN AWAY. This tomb was beyond words. Every inch was covered in brilliant drawings, including the ceiling! Heres a link to a video I found of it-- no clue how this guy took video as the prohibition of it was enforced by GUNS, but click HERE to see it anyways. :-) In the video, the parts that look just grey between the colored drawings are actually hieroglyphics, detailing every moment of the King's life. They did this so that the gods would know who he was, and what he had done in his life.

Burial temple of Queen/Pharoah Hatshepsut.

After ooh-ing and aaah-ing over the tombs of Ramesses II, III, IV, V/VI, we headed to the burial temple of Queen Hatshepsut. She was one of the only female pharoahs in ancient Egypt. In fact, she dressed herself so that she looked like a man. Most of the temple was destroyed, but it has been magnificently restored. The scale of this place was just huge. Our next stop was at an alabaster factory, where we saw how they created beautiful things with alabaster. After lunch, we headed to Karnak Temple, the greatest temple in all of Egypt, dedicated to their greatest god, Amun. This place was huge! It is more than just a temple... its an actual complex that covers more than 200 acres!! The great temple at the heart of Karnak is so big that the cathedrals of Notre Dame, St. Peter's and Milan would be lost inside of it!! The Hypostyle hall alone is 54,000 square feet and has 134 columns, making this still the largest religious building of any kind in the world. The heiroglyphics here were bigger than any we'd seen anywhere else. There's even a scared lake located within the temple!

Our tour guide, Ismael outside of Karnak.

Dad and Sean in front of Karnak and the ram-headed sphinxes there.

These columns were huge!

We took pictures of heirpglyphics that spell out Whitney's name!

Three miles away from Karnak is the Luxor Temple, also dedicated to Amun and his wife, Mut. She is the goddess of fertility and about a million other things. There is a 3-mile stretch called the "Avenue of the Sphinxes" taht actually connects the two temples. They are still uncovering this, and its not proving to be an easy task... entire high rise apartments were built on top of them and had just recently been demolished (and the families living htere relocated) in order to excavate the thousands of sphinxes buried beneath. To be honest, I don't remember much of this temple... we'd just seen so much in the past few days! It was ... incredible. I know I keep using that word, but there's no other way to describe it!! It was back on board for one more dinner and sleep on our cruise. What a day. We got really lucky in that the weather wasn't too terribly hot and the whole thing was just a super enjoyable experience!!

Avenue of Sphinxes by Luxor temple.

Really big stuff.