Luxor - Karnak and Luxor temples

We woke up on our last morning at the dahabiya and went to Esna temple - beautiful new kingdom temple with very well preserved colors. It makes such a difference to see the carvings in brilliant colors and hard to imagine how dazzling they must have been originally. There were amazing details all over the ceiling and my neck was hurting from marveling at them. One of my favorites was a crocodile headed god Sobek with the baboon hanging on his back - a symbol of knowledge and wisdom. Every scene was bursting with the symbolism. It was my favorite temple so far. After the temple, we left the dahabiya and drove for an hour north to Luxor. In Luxor we decided to spend an afternoon visiting the East Bank temples. We first went to Karnak temple. It’s absolutely enormous, all the pharaohs were basically building and adding stuff to it over the course of 1000 years. We found an audio guide online and it was helpful. The most impressive was a vestibule with 134 massive columns. Each richly decorated with symbols and hieroglyphs. After Karnak we needed a break and stopped by a small coffee shop and had a delicious waffle with fruits. With renewed energy, we went to the Luxor temple, which is open late into the evening and is illuminated by the lights. The Luxor temple was more compact and manageable and incredibly magical being lit up in the darkness.Read more