Egypt Day 13: Air-Conditioned Antiquities and Countdowns with Californians

Ah, the joys of slacking off - we woke up feeling refreshed at around 8:30 or so and wandered downstairs to try breakfast. The Isis' buffet was marginally better than the boat's from my point of view, but infinitely superior from Mel's - it didn't make her sick. The coffee was a bit on the petroleum distillate side, but the Om Ali (sugary bread soaked in sweetened milk, served warm) was quite good, if not terribly Atkins-friendly.

Once we'd finished breakfast it was off to the Luxor Museum. The museum's exhibits were designed and implemented by a group from the University of Brooklyn, and they did a wonderful job - the presentation of the artifacts was far superior to even the prepared exhibits at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Of particular interest was a collection of statues unearthed recently at Karnak. They were discovered (like so many of the historical sites in Egypt) when a guard's donkey put a hoof in a hole. The guard looked into the hole and saw a statue staring back at him! The statues themselves are remarkably well-preserved - unfortunately photography was not allowed. The museum also had several large reconstructions of fragmented reliefs andd two wonderful partial statues of Akhenaton in the peculiar style of his reign.

Once we'd finished with the museum, we caught a cab back to the hotel. For lunch we decided to try the other idiosyncratic pub in Luxor, Murphy's Irish Pub. Murphy's was set well back off the main street, but immediately won points when their TV was tuned into VH1, which was showing one of their interminable list of top 20 shows (I believe it was in the middle of Top 20 Blondes). Seated at one of the other tables were a couple about our age who from their speech were clearly American. We shared a few choice comments over VH1's choices (Sisqo hardly ranks in the top 20 of musical blondes, no matter what color he dyed his hair for the video of 'The Thong Song'), after which we invited them over to join us in a beer.

Thus we met and made friends with Deanna and Michael, two ex-Activision Brand Managers from Santa Monica. Deanna had had enough of the business and with Michael had charted out an 8-month trip around the globe. They'd been to most of southeast Asia and India and were working their way westward - and we thought we were globetrotters! We became very envious of their lack of structure and schedule - they were headed to Siwa oasis that night for 'a few days' before heading to Turkey and eastern Europe. Yow!

After about five hours of drinking Stella (the Egyptian lager, not Stella Artois - quite palatable and about $1.50 for a half-liter), we exchanged information with and bade farewell to Michael and Deanna and headed back toward the hotel. We stopped off at the Le Meridien to book a car for the next day's West Bank excursion - on the schedule were the Tombs of the Nobles, the Tombs of the Workers (Deir al-Medina) and the Medinat Habu temple. Once back at the hotel, we decide we're not hungry enough to need dinner and instead focus on writing up our notes for posting. Once we had enough entries to warrant the expense of posting, we wandered downstairs to the internet access terminals to let the outside world know we were alive.

Ugh. One look and it was clear this was going to be an uphill battle. Two PCs networked together using WinGate, with one acting as a gateway for the other through a single 56k dialup line? So much for plugging in my laptop and simplyt cutting and pasting. We eventually get the two PCs to connect long enough to re-type two entries and post them - we'll post more when we have real internet access. After that, we headed back to the room for an early night - we had a big day the next day that started at 8 AM.

Check out Mel's blog for the next installment of our story: Grant's Favorite Day Yet (Not in Mel's Top Ten).