Spring in Egypt Part 10 - Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut Temple

Early in the morning on the 6th day of the tour we checked out of our rooms on the cruise went on a bus ride to pick-up the early risers who signed up for a hot air balloon ride. By the time we got there the balloon ride was done, so they joined us on the bus and we drove to our next destination, The Valley of the Kings.

The Valley of the Kings is a burial site for many kings and nobles from the New Kingdom. Our entrance tickets gave us entry to any three tombs with some exception. The famous King Tut's tomb is located in this valley and to enter it you will need to pay a separate ticket.

The outside of the valley really didn't look like much. It was hot and dusty. We went into three different tombs as recommended by Michael and loved each of them. The paintings and reliefs were very clear and colourful, and the fact that they were thousands of years old is just mind-boggling. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures inside the tombs without a camera ticket.

Dusty!

After entering 3 tombs of our choice at the Valley of the Kings, we continued our journey to Hatshepsut Temple. I personally don't find this temple too exciting, they've only restored a small portion of the temple and the process was still ongoing. However, the history of Hatshepsut herself is very interesting. According to Michael, she was the one and only known Egyptian female ruler. Even though other female royalties were well known, they were 'wives of pharaohs' instead of being pharaohs themselves. Later on there was Cleopatra but she was not Egyptian.

That being said, Wikipedia stated that there were other confirmed female rulers...

Now do you remember that I mentioned that in Luxor I had changed my camera ISO to 4000? Well I had forgotten to change it back to normal and a bunch of my pictures taken with the Olympus were overexposed. The very same thing happened in Shanghai after new year's eve pictures. Worse than a donkey, I didn't learn from my mistake. Shame on me!

So now lets just call them artistic photos....

There were still some paintings visible at this temple...

A game of "which one's our bus?"

From Hatshepsut temple, our bus dropped us off for a short walk to a hotel/restaurant for lunch. We each paid 150 EGP for freshly made food. It was delicious! I have to admit that I love Egyptian food and I was worried for nothing. I had prepared a bunch of granola bars for just-in-case and I barely touched them throughout the trip. I had multiple servings at almost every meal I was worried I would double my weight by the time we had to go home!

After lunch we walked to the dock area and boarded a boat to cross the river... I tried going up the boat front but got scolded so I went back to sit like a good girl. Lol...