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Here’s number two of my Middle East tour travel blog series which will cover Luxor and Cairo. An 18-hour bus ride from Dahab brought us safely to the Luxor bus station on Friday where Joseph, our hostel owner, met us. We received a similar “welcoming ceremony” to the one in Dahab at Joseph’s hostel, just less ocean resort theme and a lot more Bob Marley - because nothing says I’m vacationing in Egypt like Bob Marley décor. The plethora of soda cans (and upside-down McDonald’s cups) turned ceiling decorations was a nice touch as well. . . Joseph gave us the run down on suggested activities in Luxor - felucca sunset cruise down the Nile, Temple at Karnak, Temple at Luxor, Valley of the Kings & Queens and then the Temple of Hatshepshut.

Cairo (& Luxor): Where I Found My Egyptian Husband

Lisa Damico
2007-04-21 22:41:41

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Here's number two of my Middle East tour travel blog series which will cover Luxor and Cairo. An 18-hour bus ride from Dahab brought us safely to the Luxor bus station on Friday where Joseph, our hostel owner, met us. We received a similar "welcoming ceremony" to the one in Dahab at Joseph's hostel, just less ocean resort theme and a lot more Bob Marley - because nothing says I'm vacationing in Egypt like Bob Marley décor. The plethora of soda cans (and upside-down McDonald's cups) turned ceiling decorations was a nice touch as well. . . Joseph gave us the run down on suggested activities in Luxor - felucca sunset cruise down the Nile, Temple at Karnak, Temple at Luxor, Valley of the Kings & Queens and then the Temple of Hatshepshut.

We dumped our things in the dorm rooms then Joseph took us to the train station to buy tickets to Cairo. The train station was an interesting experience, one that definitely highlighted the fact "we were no longer in Kansas Toto." The train station looks much like any other train station in the world, a spacious main room with multiple ticket counters followed by a hallway that leads to the train tracks - yet there's a lot more to these simple ticket counters than meets the eye. Apparently there are an invisible signs somewhere above Counters A and B that actually say "Counter A is for normal people, tourists, etc and there aren't anymore of the tickets you want" and "Counter B is for special people for whom we can miraculously find completely sold-out tickets." Silly us, got in line B at first, but after the man at the counter could no longer handle our ignorance of who was allowed to stand in line B and who wasn't we were told we had to get in the other line. Thus we made our way back to the end of line A only to be told the train to Cairo was full, we'd have to wait until Sunday evening (a day later than we had wanted). Joseph the hostel owner (and a new hostel owner at that) quietly pulled us aside to say if we wanted he could get us "black market train tickets (which you know actually just come from Counter B)." We figured why not, as long as they were legitimate tickets and they got us
to Cairo sometime soon.

With the train ticket business behind us (we thought) he motioned for a taxi-bus to take us to Karnak - one riding equaling 25 cents (you remember 7 Egyptian pounds = 1