Egypt: Day Six: Karnak

On Monday, we went to Karnak after breakfast on the boat. It was huge - very tall walls at the entrance and the entire site is 67 acres or something like that.

The massive, tall columns in the famous hippostyle hall were awe-inspiring. We got "shown" into Hatshepsut's Temple by an old Egyptian guy, knowing full well that some baksheesh (a tip) was going to be necessary. The entire time the old guy was pointing out "beautiful" paintings in the walls, all I could think was, "We have no small change. Crap." This was the story of our entire trip. Egypt runs on baksheesh. Everybody wants baksheesh. Everybody wants to do something for you (show you some "special" part of a temple, take your photo, carry your bag, etc.) in order to get some baksheesh. But the problem is that the baksheesh receivers end up with ALL the small change in the nation of Egypt. And we had none. The banks had none. No one else had any. Very frustrating. So, we ended up telling the dude that we had no change. He was very quick to offer us change and pulled out some crisp bills for us from a sizable wad of cash in his pocket. Hysterical. He had nicer bills than we did.



If you've ever seen the old movie "Death on the Nile," then you might notice that one scene was filmed in Karnak. Anyway, we could have spent hours there (or perhaps days) but we had to get back to the boat (after our guide stopped off at Luxor Temple to buy us some bootlegged photo postcards of the Valley of the Kings that we really wanted). We had to hurry back because our guide wanted to beat the rush at the lock at Esna, and we certainly beat it, but JUST. We pulled right into the lock behind a cruise ship and didn't have to wait at all.

Dinner was fabulous. My special menu included: tomato soup, pasta salad set on red cabbage, fried cauliflower with ginger mashed potatoes and stirfried veggies and noodles, and dessert (I always got fruit while the others got cake. Which was just as well because I put on 10 pounds during the week even without the cake).