Last day in Luxor

October 4th - 7:00pm
I'm sitting in El Hussien resturant waiting on my chicken dish, after finishing my walk through Karnak. I've had an interesting day. I was up early to get things together because check out was supposed to be at noon. The desk attendant let me stay until 3 which was cool. That gave me time to rest a little more and then head off to the train station to get my ticket for the 10:15pm train. I was hoping it would be quick but that wasn't the case. I stood in line for 10 minutes, got to the window and the guy walks away. I waited along with another person that was next to me thinking the guy would be right back. He went to lunch and we waited for 30 minutes. The crowd behind me started getting angry about 20 minutes into the wait. It was so hot I think I lost 5 ponds by sweating. And, because of the heat people were getting smelly,... OMG, I wont even go into how bad oral hygen is here. Finally, finally he comes back and I get my ticket.

On the way back to the hotel I stopped to talk to an older gentalmen. It turns out that he's a captain of a felluca and is up front with me about wanting my tourist dollars. He speaks english very well and we talk for 20 minutes or so before I agree to come back at 3 for a ride on his boat. I get back to the hotel, rest, get my board shorts on and head for the pool. It was soo good.

Food is here, have to eat.

8:35pm
I'm back at the hotel.... sneaking in again to use the free wifi. I finshed dinner and walked down to collect my bag from the other part of the hotel. Dinner was good and I'm so full. It completes a long day and hopefully I get some sleep on the long train ride I have tonight.

So, back to my folies. As I mentioned, I hired a felluca boat to sail on the Nile. I meet the captain and we cross the street to the dock, board the boat and get pushed off. We're drifting out into the middle of the Nile and it's beautiful. So this conversation starts between the captain and his helper. One of the ropes is cuaght and he can't get it unstuck. We drift to the west bank, have to push off another boat, and the helper then gets a long piece of wood to push off the bottom and move us up stream. We get to a place without traffic and the helper climbs the mast again to try and get the sail unstuck. He's not successful, climbs down and gets out an oar. I'm enjoying the trip regardless but the experiance is comical. Eventually, the captain joins in on the rowing. I have pictures of all of this. To funny. I just did an hour on the boat because I wanted to get to Karnak before the 4:30 cut off for tickets. I get off the boat and walk to Karank. I get there in time... yesterday I didn't and I was turned away. Grrr

Karnak is beautiful! Amazing! It's massive, and simply astonishing. I walk around for a couple hours with my mouth open and every few minutes I close it to form the word Wow. I took so many pictures. You could spend weeks there trying to capture images. I finally found the reflecting pool and spent a half hour or so just watching the sunset. I was finally kicked out by a guard. They close the place and charge twice as much for the sound and light show after 7:30. It's an amazing place and I should have spent much more time there. Saddly, I'm leaving tonight and headed for Alexandria.