We're free, we're free....

Hi from Luxor!

I'm officially old today...I wouldn't let Sue celebrate it until 9am, to account for the time difference, so I relished my last remaining hours in my 20's...Sue bought me dinner tonight at this awesome restaurant in downtown Luxor. We sat at an outdoor table and watched the horse carriages go by while eating really good Egyptian food(we're addicted!) one of the best meals yet, and as we always take each other out for our birthdays Sue got off easy...Food is so cheap here we both ate huge meals for about $4 Canadian ..I told her that that is exactly how much I will spend on her in one month so McDonald's here we come.

We had a really relaxing fun cruise...we met some cool people on the boat and had a good time last night watching the sunset from the top desk with them as the foggy skies of Luxor crept up from the distance. We finished our cruise this morning with 7 hours of tour-guided sight seeing from 7am-2pm in stiflingly hot,hot,hot weather...I love it hot and even I was dying out here. The whole tour-guided thing was OK at times but we much preferred doing it on our own...we felt a little herded around like cattle by the end; you can't take break when you want, you had to stand in the sun for long periods of time listening to the tour guide drone on and on and with Sue's bad knees it was hard for her to stand around like that. Our guide spoke very good English but was hard to understand...we can't put our finger on why exactly but you had to concentrate very hard to get it...if you let your mind drift he sounded like he was speaking a foreign language...we felt like two kids in social studies class trying to pay attention unsuccessfully. We are also both very quick sight viewers...in and out...the tour guided stuff lasted about 4 times as long as our attention spans! So we're free!!!! Yeah!

We saw the Valley of the Kings and Queens today...they were excavating that new tomb they just found and we got to watch for a bit. We also went to Karnak and Luxor Temples...which were really amazing, the best we have seen yet. Unfortunately, by the time we saw them it was 5 hours into the day, smokin' hot and we couldn't appreciate them fully because WE WERE DONE. We're gonna go back fresh and crawl through them before we leave Luxor.

Luxor is quite a nice city...a lot like Aswan but busier with more energy to it. The Sellers are more aggressive here as well...we are pretty good at ignoring them but there were a few people on the tour bus from the boat that just got completely taken advantage of...Two of the guys from the cruise, Robert and Sal, would come back to the bus every time after walking through the souvenir shops post sight-seeing with crap they always stated they were forced to buy. You can't engage sellers at all... you have to just shake your head no and walk...or say no in Arabic so they don't know what language to sell to you in, they get confused and move on to the next person.

We are staying at the Sheraton at Luxor..it's pretty nice...we only paid $46 US per night so a steal! It has an amazing pool overhanging the Nile with super comfy loungers, we have big basking plans tomorrow! Oh and another mini-fridge(we looove the mini-fridge) water is about 2LE in town and 15 LE at the hotel ...same for pop , half price in town..we're cheap, well not cheap, but don't like to be taken advantage of like we're walking dollar signs because we're in a nice hotel. It's the principle.

Well, we're off to check out the Souk and head home to bed(we were up at 5am today) Talk to you all soon.

P.S. A big thanks out to all those folks shoveling my walk!!! Funny how I have hardly touched my shovel all year and the second I leave town it snows. I owe you all many free shovels when I return:)