After Cairo, we took an overnight train to Luxor. The Cairo train station was hardly the most modern on the inside, though there is a beautiful ceiling and wonderful facade, but it just about does the job. Apart from the lack of decent power to charge anything the sleeper train was fairly comfortable, though its not easy to sleep on trains generally.
Once in Luxor we stayed a small guesthouse with just a handful of rooms but a nice view over the Nile from the rooftop balcony and a small swimming pool that we didn't use as it was not that warm. We tried to keep our exercise up so took the local ferry which decided to leave whenever the driver felt like it, and walked along the river up to Karnak Temple, which is quite incredible. Especially the room with the 96 pillars or something. The place was packed with tourists but it was still really interesting and somewhat overwhelming. Of course hieroglyphs were all over the place. Very highly recommended. We then stopped by Luxor Museum to see some of the artefacts from the Temple, including various pots, statues of pahraohs, mummies, and wall decorations. The last stop on the "East Bank" was the Luxor Temple, which we decided to enjoy from the outside since you could see almost all of it without need to go in and pay yet another entrance fee. There used to be--and there will soon again be--a path connecting the two temples and along the entire stretch of a few kilometer, every 50m or so are plinths with lions on. The whole thing is being rebuilt and it will be quite spectacular when finished (if not somewhat pointless).
The next day was the West Bank where we rented bikes and cycled around visiting lots more temples and then a lot of tombs. It is a complicated ticketing system with all different tickets available, some form a central ticket office, some on site. Some of the best sites are ridiculously expensive. As with the East Bank temples, the West Bank temples are interesting, though for different reasons, since they are not as complete or as stunning, but they are mostly tourist free, so visiting is a more lonely experience.
And then it was time for the tombs... and there are hundreds of them, most open to visit if you really want to. I think we went inside about 10 in the end, in the Valley of the Queens, Valley of the Kings and some others. Generally there was a long entrance that would go slightly downhill from the entrance that was on a hillside, and as you walked down the tunnels inside the hill there would be some side rooms; and all along the tunnels were stories in hieroglyphics. At the end would be the final resting place of the relevant pharaoh, noble or other person. Usually all the persons' valuables would be buried in the room or a neighboring room near them, and their mummy would be in a sarcophagus that would be inside a casket inside another box etc.
It is a fairly interesting experience visiting the tombs and there are some variations between them, some different artwork, some are better restored than others, but after a while one has seen enough. The house where the explorer who excavated Tutankhamen's tomb can be visited and in the garden they built a replica of the actual tomb which tourists can visit and see the photos and stories of what it was like during the excavation.
Our last day in Luxor included some shopping in the market where we had made a friend selling us perfumes and paintings, and a quad bike trip out to the desert; the highlight of which was the final 15 minutes when we were allowed to have some fun driving up and down some sand dunes. Luxor was a much better place for running than Cairo and we had a couple of good runs up and down the banks of he river seeing some of the farmers and their fields along the way, as well as all the large cruise ships (apparently there are 350 on the whole river) and small sailing boats. Having spent quite a lot of money and got a tan from spending so much time outside, it was back on the sleeper train to Cairo.
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