Trip to 'Alaska'

Egypt was amazingly cold when we arrived, totally out of our expectation (and it became warm just when we were about to leave, of course).. I guess it is probably also out of the expectation of Egyptians, so 'welcome to Alaska' was one of the most common phrases I heard when I was there..

(Oh I'm too lazy to write everything myself on my blog.. i almost want to just copy Edward's blog... :S)

Luxor

They put up these nice welcome signs and even painted the yellow stop lines in the middle of the night the day before the visit. Wouldn't be surprised if the paint still was wet when Mubarak drove over it.. (copied from Edward)
Me and Laura pretending to be muslimsWe went to a restaurant with a great Nile view for dinner. Unfortunately it turned out it was expensive and the food was crap, but whatever... :-)(copied from Edward)Practice procession for Mubarak's visit the next day.(copied from Edward)But at least we got to see the nice sunest on the Nile
More nice sunset
The whole group of the Norwegians we ran into, Super Ingegerd, me, Edward, Bram and the two Colossi of Memnon. (Half copied from Edward)
Inside the temple of Hatshepsut. I think they are beautifulThe temple of Hatshepsut
In this photo there is the Swedish woman we ran into and who joined us. Her name is Ingegerd, she is 78 years old and has been virtually everywhere, including Antarctica!! She was just travelling around on her own, having with her only a tiny backpack weighing in at a bare 10 kg - "and then I have my own bed sheets and towel in there as well".And our fears that she would slow us down were soon calmed as she would run up and down the stairs faster than any of us could, despite being fifty years younger!(copied from Edward)
The precious picture Edward took before the guard caught him...
Me & crazy EdwardThis is a long story. err.. im too lazy to write about it:S laaaaaaaaaaaaaater!
We were drinking wine on the hotel terrace. The guy who took this picture for us was fairly quiet and looked embarrased. I was thinking, 'oh, what a boring guy!'. Later, the hotel staff came to tell us that we are not allowed to drink here since Mubarak was coming the next day, and the guy I asked to take pic for us was just the policeman who came to check if the hotel sells alchohol.. Oops..
We ran into this family and was generously offered tea.
Stella is a strange thing I think, the taste is totally depended on where you buy it or if you are lucky. I was not very lucky unfortunately..
The Luxor temple was fairly small but the ticket costs 40 Egyptian pounds!! Therefore we decided not to get in, but wondering outside instead.. see, at least I got my face close enough to the temple, almost looked like I was inside there!:DLuxor temple
More Luxor templeThe enormous finger of someone!!
Me& Mr.EddieMe and the enormous wall
Edward found one as well, a bit smaller than mine though
I found a big lovely new friend
Two Arabs in the temple
Me and Uma saw some people doing seven laps around the big scarab beetle and then bow so we decided to do the same. I thought it was for good luck but apparently if you do it you are supposed to meet the love of your life... Uuups. Ohh I didn't know that.. But it is not that bad anyway, is it?;)
Edward attempted to act like an Asian by doing the 'victory' gesture and taking as many pictures as a Japanese
Me and the secret lake
The hypostyle hall was truly fantastic if you ask me. It is really impossible the render the idea of what you feel like in there, being surrounded by more than a 100 of these gigantic pillars. You can't even fit them in a photo, at least not with my camera.

Well, I felt almost exactly the same... so sorry Edward, copied yours again!
The paintings on the ceiling
Well I like doors!
Some parts of the inside are surprisingly colorful
Hello Edward
It is far taller than me:(

Abu Simbel

On the second day we had to get up at a horrible 3am in order to get into a minivan and go with a police convoy down to the site of Abu Simbel. It was freezing when we made it there, quite unexpectedly too considering we were only tens of kilometers from the Sudanese border.

Abu Simbel was built in the 13th century BC by Ramses II to commemorate him and the famous first lady Nefertiti (I guess you must say he accomplished that goal) and also to intimidate his Nubian neighbors. Indeed, I probably wouldn't have gone further if I had run into this monument when going down the Nile... :-)
Me and Bram sitting on the not-very-impressive Aswan high dam
I wanted a picture with the nice flowers behind me.. but I got a lake..
Hungry monkeys eating apples
It must have been a huge cinema or a conference center or something here.. so many seats!!
Me and the beautiful lake.. or it is actually the Nile?I'm staring at the painting in some temple in Philea Island.
It looked exactly like you would expect it too. In the entrace hall they also had an exhibition about how everything had been cut into pieces and moved when the High Dam was built and Lake Nasser created. Well, they did an amazing job because it was really hard to see that these monsters had once been in a completely different place.

(Edward, I agree on everything in your comment...)
The pic I took on the bus to Abu simbel, before the sunrise.. I really like it, especially when I think about, ohh, im almost in Sudan!!

Aswan

Loads of feluccas on the Nile, and there were also loads of really irritating felucca captains on the Aswan corniche.

*Exactly*
I really like that door and the excellent Nile view behind it
And here is the excellent Nile view behind the doorSome gagantic parts of the door of the templeIt was supposed to be a really nice picture with some Asian features. Too bad Edward changed his mind at the last second and made a dirty gesture instead of an Asian one;)The ruins at the south of Elephantine Island. To be honestly, it feels like they haven't improved that much since then, because the Nubian village looks almost just like the ruins.
They have iron fence around many places which you are not supposed to get in.
The colorful Nubian village
We both looked pretty strange since we had a lot of food in the mouth then Edward took the picture.
Edward found a weird looking cat in a shop while I was waiting for my rings to be made.
No Hassle shops!! Those are not really 'no hassle' shops, since the shop owner usually approach you anyway while screaming 'no hassles, come, come, no hassles!!', and when you walk away, they even ask you 'why? why?'... ...
Fier exit.. err..
This is just a wired thing.. ..
Edward got some excellent first-class service in the morning when we got on the train to Aswan.