Hot, hot air ballooning and more in Luxor.

As the cat's away the mice shall play!! Andy is currently 3m under the Red Sea, so this means Gilleasbuig, Iona and myself have the computer to ourselves, and we thought it was time to add another post to our blog.
As we left the cool breezes of sailing on the Nile, we found ourselves in hot, dry Luxor. There is a decidedly French feel to much of our trip so far, and in Luxor we stayed on the West Bank of the Nile, where the children enjoyed the delights of crepes as a change from babaganoush and hummus. As we took the ferry to the East Bank we found another French connection in the Luxor Temple, where one of a pair of Ramesses II obelisks still stands. Its twin is to be found in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, while 2 of the original 6 colossi of the same pharaoh are still in The Louvre.
This is still a bone of bitter contention with the Egyptians, that so many of their national treasures and historical artifacts were "looted" by foreigners and now grace public and private collections around the world. This was the theme of an opening exhibition in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo while we were there.
As Andy has already touched on, travelling with children gives you a different perspective, and you end up basing activities more on "fun" rather than other criteria. In Luxor we managed a mix of fun and some history.
Luxor is the ancient Egyptian capital of Thebes (1567 - 1085 BC), and its ruins make it one of the world's greatest open air museums. We first visited the Valley of The Kings, the burial site for many pharaohs of this era, where we visited 3 tombs belonging to Ramses I, III and Tuthmosis III. Due to the number of visitors the authorities rotate the tombs visited, to reduce the amount of damage from body sweat and breath, and the 35-40 C degree heat outside quickly becomes appealing after the high humidity of the tombs. The Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut and Karnak temple were the most impressive ruins of our Egyptian leg, and we felt dwarfed by both.
The fun element was introduced using hot air balloon, caleche (horse drawn carriage) and ferry.
We took a sunrise balloon flight across the Valley of the Kings. It also gave us a unique view into various peoples' houses as our captain took us on a low level fly over of a west bank village. The children loved it, but Andy looked decidedly less impressed. He is bad enough in a 747, so a patchwork of string, assorted cloth like materials and naked flames did not put him at ease.

As we were staying on the west bank, we had to cross the river to see the numerous sights on the east bank. The simplest and cheapest way to do this was by ferry. Again the children loved sitting at the bow and watching river life flow by.

After one of these crossing, and at the special request of Morag, we took a caleche to the temple at Karnak. Iona and Lachlan took charge and drove us most of the way. At last those horse riding lessons are paying out!