Karnak Temple

We were up early for breakfast as we wanted to head off to Karnak Temple before lots of tour buses arrived.  We ventured outside to hail a taxi and who did we meet up with but the chap who has more or less become 'our driver' when we're in Luxor.  His name is Ahmed Mohamed Osman, but he calls himself 'Dony Osman' and his stance is outside the Winter Palace.  His car is No. 2 and it's fairly new and modern with air conditioning.  He's totally and utterly mad, but we like him!  There's no haggling with him and no hassle - he's one of those 'pay me what you think' chaps, which I think always bags them more money than they should be getting!!  Anyway, we clambered into his taxi and he took us off to Karnak with the arrangement  being that I'd phone him when we wanted him to come back and collect us.

We paid the 65LE each for entry into the Temple and headed off on the fairly long walk to get to the entrance.  As we had never been in the Open Air Museum part of Karnak Temple, we headed there first, paid the extra 25LE each at the entrance and headed in.  We had the place to ourselves and wandered around there to our heart's content!  Wonderful!!

This is just a wee sample of some photos that I took - I have loads more!!

After looking round the outdoor museum, we headed back into the main temple area, which by now was starting to get quite busy.  Now, there's one iconic photo that everyone seems to have that has been taken at Karnak Temple and I didn't have it - that is until now!!

So, if I never make it back to Karnak at any time in the future, I now have the photo that I wanted!!  Here are a few more - I will try not to bore you with too many!!

A temple cat!

To show you the scale of these huge pillars, that small figure is my husband!!

We were just leaving the temple as hoards of tourists were arriving from the tour buses, so we had chosen a good time to visit. I phoned Dony to ask him to come for us and, by the time we got down to where we were to be picked up, he was there waiting for us.  We spent the rest of the day at the pool and ate our rolls at lunch time in our rooms as we now also had the kettle to use.

That night we walked down Medina Street once more and had a meal at the King and Thai, which was quite nice.  For three starters, four main courses, two sweets and drinks, the cost was 405LE.  My sweet was interesting - deep fried ice cream with pineapple fritters!!  This is what it looked like - it was huge!!

We walked back towards the hotel and stopped off again at Cafe Moka for our coffee.  We had noticed during our walk back that it seemed a little quieter than normal, and when we got to the top of the street at the cafe we found out why!  The police and what also looked like army personnel had road blocks set up and they were stopping motor cycles.  They even had confiscated a few that were sitting in the back of pick-up trucks ready to be taken away to wherever they take them - and about time too!!  There were a few irate owners remonstrating with the authorities, so we didn't hang about and slipped back into the confines of the hotel and left them all to it!!