Luxor and Aswan 2 (9/11/10)

I woke up on a cruise ship. It was pretty sweet. We hadn't sailed at all during the night, which was surprising. Breakfast was delicious and after it was over, maggie and I sat up on the top deck (the 'solarium') and read and talked for a while until it got too hot. We were really surprised when we got back to the room and found a surprise waiting for us (and not a very good surprise). It pretty much scared us to death. Well-intentioned maybe, well-thought out, no.

surprise! right in our doorway.

my bananagram letters

After our surprise, I learned how to play 'bananagrams' with small pieces of paper with letters written on them. It's basically scrabble, but faster and much more interesting. I didn't win, but I still had fun. While we were playing, the boat started moving for the first time. I didn't expect it to go so fast!
In only a few hours (just in time to put us in the hottest part of the day) we landed at Kom Ombu, an ancient temple on the bank of the Nile. After exploring the temple, we visited a traditional Egyptian house nearby and saw some animals and stuff.

my little buddy gryphon-thing

the original paint - it's lasted about 2000 years!

four different pillars at kom ombu

moo cow

the boat's wake (side wake?)

Then we returned to the ship and it started sailing again for a few hours, until it was dark, and we spent the whole time 'doing homework' (ie: talking about subjects ranging from BBC shows to Catholic school to books about time travel). Then we went to dinner, which was delicious as usual. [Edit to add: I keep gushing about the food in these blogs and never describing it. Basically, it was every kind of carbohydrate every night, always in some new sauce or cheese or something. Dessert was either fancy Western cakes (okay) or traditional Egyptian desserts (absolutely fabulous). I would have gotten pictures, but I was too busy stuffing my face to pick up my camera.]

okay, one lunch picture. see what i mean about carbs?

After dinner, there was a galabeya (traditional Egyptian dress) party, for which Maggie and I had purchased two (moderately expensive) galabeya earlier. We didn't end up going to the party because it looked a little bit lame. When we got back to our room, though, we found another surprise waiting for us. This one was much better: surprising but not incredibly freaky.

our friends the towel swans.
mine (r) is named clyde, and maggie's (l) is named gibson.

Anyway, tomorrow we have to get up and be off the boat to go to Edfu by 6:00 am, so it's time to get some sleep. 'Tomorrow' will stretch all the way to Monday night without stopping, so we need to take our sleep where we can get it.