Temples and Trains

My Egypt roommate Rachael and I in our disgusting train car

Luxor Temple



A scarab beetle carving at the Karnak temple



At the Karnak temple

This day began with a boat ride up the Nile to Karnak temple. Once again, an amazing structure build by genious means. The Egyptians new how to make everything so much larger than life, and somhow much of it is still standing thousands of years later. Everything from the pillars and columns. Once again, there was temple symbolism all over their carvings in the walls. After the end of tour, we were given some free time to run around and take some pictures. We then took carraiges (yes, those are still a highly used form of transportaion here) over to Luxor temple. Luxor temple was not quite as big at Karnak, but just as impressive as all of the other buildings we have visited. Outside of the Luxor temple there are rows of Shpinx creating a path towards Karnak temple. Back when the temples existed in all of their glory, they were connected by a two mile walkway of Sphinx. How fun it would have been to be able to walk that past! There are now buildings and homes blocking the connection between the two. One of the strangest things to see in both of these Ancient Egyptian temples were the signs of Early Christian influence. The faces of many of the Egyptian writings were chipped off by the Christians and paintings of Holy scenes were painted up alongside all of the Egyptian writings. In Luxor temple, There is a mosque and signs of where a Christian church was built inside. it contains three major civilizations places of worship. After Luxor temple, it was back to the hotel for free time. I didn't feel like battling the Bazaar again, so I stuck around the hotel. As evening time came, we all gathered in the hotel lobby and socialized until we got on the buses that took us to the train station. As soon as we ariived at the train station, I knew we were in for an undesired adventure. The only train I have experienced before is the train in Durango. A short, clean, opren train car for a scenic ride. This train looked like it had been to Hell and back one too amny times. As we loaded into our sleeping traincars, I have never felt so out of my comfort zone as when I tryed to figure out how I was going to ride all night in this train back to Cairo without touching anything. You know your in trouble when the bar of soap in the sink says "Good Luck". My hand sanitizer bottle went from about half full to almost empty by the end of that train ride. Luckily for me, I has a roommate that was as free spirited as any person could be, and she made the stay in the train as little of a fuss as possible, and kept me laughing the whole time we were awake. Because we has been kicked out of our hotel rooms earlier in the day and had to ride the overnight train, all of us looked like train wrecks. No showers and a night on the train from hell can do that quickly.