Egypt, day 7

Day 7 was quite a busy day. Along with the pyramids, the highlight of any trip to Egypt is a visit to the Valley of the Kings, where there are dozens of tombs, including the tomb of King Tut. (There wasn't anything historically noteworthy about King Tut. He just happened to have the fortunate of no one discovering his tomb until 1922, which meant that the grave robbers hadn't gotten to it.)

Unfortunately, there's nothing I can show you from the Valley of the Kings. Predictably, you can't take pictures inside the tombs. I'll tell you that it's worth the trip, though. The colors on the walls are amazingly vibrant, even after thousands of years. The pictures and hieroglyphics stretch on forever. We went inside the tombs of Ramses III, Ramses IV, and Ramses VI, but that was just a small sampling of what was available.

After the Valley of the Kings, we visited the temple of Queen Hatshepsut.



This is Halel, our tour guide. He was with us the whole week. I spent hours talking with him about Middle East politics, the attitude of Egypt toward the United States, the future of Egypt, and other topics. I'll say more about that sometime.

Next, we visited the Colossi of Memnon.

That night, we rode in horse-drawn carriages to the Temple of Luxor. This was the only ancient Egyptian site that we visited in the dark, and it was a different kind of experience. It all looked a bit more mysterious and mystical at night than it would have during the day.