This morning the train man woke us up super early and served us breakfast that consisted of two pastries, some sort of fruit bread, and a roll. Good breakfast, huh? Yeah, I didn’t eat all of it. It was nice to get off the train and finally see Egypt in the morning light and get a better look at the people around me. Once we got on our new bus, we saw a group of deaf boys that were standing in front of the station waiting to go to school. It was interesting looking at their sign language. We immediately headed to this site that was near the Valley of the Kings. We stopped to take pictures with some statues of Pharaohs and the desert looking area. Each tour site that we go to has a million and one venders trying to shove postcards, miniature statues, books, and nonsense in your face. They really like one dollar bills so they always ask for that. They also always try to compliment you too and say we are the most beautiful girls ever.
After we were done there, we headed to the Valley of the Kings. This is where many of the Egyptian pharaohs and queens were buried and we got to actually go into the tombs that were decorated and built by the Egyptians. It took four to six years to make a tomb with 70 workers working 24 hours a day, 9 days a week (they used 10 day weeks) and in groups of five men at a time! That is a lot of work! Just for one tomb. That's one interesting thing that really surprised me. The Egyptians cared so much about preserving as much as they can, and honoring the dead as best as they can. This is somewhat seen throughout today times, but not as extreme. Of that, I am glad. I went into three different tombs here; two kings and one queen. The queen tomb was my favorite by far. It was the most decorated and the color was well preserved compared to the others making it super beautiful.
After we were done at the Valley of the Kings, we then headed off to an alabaster shop. Here, we got to actually watch them make pottery out of alabaster. My favorite part was when the shop owner took us in and showed us the different colors of alabaster pots and put it up to the light. They were so beautiful under the light. I really would have liked to have bought one, especially the green tinted one but it would have been a challenge to get it back home to the states, so I decided not to.
After the Alabaster shop, we went to the Temple of Habu. This was our first non-Greek temple and for that I was so grateful! Not that the Greek ones are bad, I was just getting tired of seeing mostly only ruins of them. However, this temple was beautiful! I absolutely loved it! I think it was a mixture of the beautiful sunlight that was hitting it and the fact that it was my first Egyptian temple. An interesting thing that I learned here was that when the flag is raised, this is when it is time to pray. Also, you can't have your shoes on in the holy places of the temple. When we were at this temple, I honestly totally felt God there in our presence and it felt so wonderful.
After the temple, we headed to our cruise ship! This was very exciting because I couldn't wait to sleep in a little bit and actually be on a bed that wasn't moving the whole night back and forth like the train was. When we got there we went to our rooms, and they were really nice. Then we took a little nap and had dinner. We all hung out up on the deck for a little while and then went to bed because it was a long exhausting day and we had a lot of touring to do in the morning!
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