Back on the sleeper train Friday

Thursday was spent recovering from the felucca trip :) I got a room mate for one night in the hotel, but she was nice. We went to two temples in morning, freshened up at the hotel, and then went to see Luxor temple by night. It was very cool to see such a magnificent temple all lit up! It was very beautiful. Then we went for a group dinner at a Egyptian buffet, which was nice, but not amazing.

This morning I had to wake up at 4.30 to go on my hot air balloon ride! It was still dark and pretty cold. The hot air balloons bare so big! They lay them out on the group and slowly inflate them with hot air. Then you get into the basket and they fire up the gas frame thing and you lift off and float away. I was a little bit scared to begin with, and I wasn't sure how well I'd handle the hight and being suspended so high by just some hot air, a balloon, and a basket - but I was totally fine. It was a wonderful experience. The balloon was so stable and quiet, and watching the sun rise over the Nile and seeing all the other balloons in the sky was really awesome. I enjoyed hot air ballooning a lot!

When we landed, we met up with the rest of the group (not everyone went up) and travelled a little ways to the valley of the kings. It's where a whole lot of very intact tombs are, many of which still have all the original art and colours in them. The art is similar to all the rest of the ruins, but being able to see the colours was really special. We got access to three tombs, and all the ones I saw were gorgeous. I liked the paintings of birds the best.

After that we went to the temple of a the only female phaero. It was not very interesting. So, we left and had a yummy group lunch at a local Egyptian restaurant. After lunch it was time for the last temple of the tour. We were all kind of breathing a sigh of relief about that. We sure have seen a lotion temples. This one was pretty great, though. It's the biggest temple in the world, apparently. Covering 45 acres of land! We only saw part of it, but it was pretty intact and very interesting. I enjoyed that one.

Then it was time to go back to the hotel to freshen up for our overnight train trip. We ended up in our tour guides room eating McDonald's :) the group has really improved over the last couple Mondays, and is a lot of fun now. So, now I'm on the sleeper train, with a cabin oneself again. Time to go to bed and retreads forth last day of the tour tomorrow.