Luxor Class Trip | Travel Diary

Hey guys, it's me again!

Welcome to my first English blog post (yayy!). I've decided to occasionally upload English blog entries, because -obviously- a lot more people are able to understand and read those :) Especially when it comes to travelling, keeping the 'audience' (aka the three people who actually read my blog) international makes a lot more sense, in my opinion. So in the future I'm going to switch around between English and German, depending on the content and (mostly) depending on my mood ;). Anyways this is the Travel Diary to the trip to Luxor we took in November (Literally three months ago. As a German I am always on time.) and well I'm just gonna tell you what we did so enjoy!

First of all I have to say that planning this trip was a bit of a drama for all of us, but I was still as excited as ever because it was the first time the school actually allowed us to leave our city for a trip. (Well we do have crazy demands...) We were originally going to go with two teachers, one who teaches history and wanted to visit us like twenty-seven different temples, but then something happened and I didn't really get it (that's the drama part btw) but we ended up going with a classmate's dad and the other teacher who (like us) wanted to avoid potential stress.

We ended up having a trip without any issues, fights or trouble and I have to say that it was truly amazing.

yup, that's me

After having had breakfast in the school 'cafeteria' we got on the bus to begin our little journey. We started around ten o'clock and ended up arriving in Luxor at 2.30. During the actual drive we mostly ate and talked and annoyed each other :D (Btw, whenever I say 'we' I'm either referring to me and my class, which is 11 people, two girls and a bunch of guys or to me and my two friends, just so you know) As our hotel the Gezira Garden Hotel, which happens to be my friend's parent's business (What a coincidence, right?) was located on the West bank we just spontaneously decided to take a boat to the other side instead of driving the long way across the bridge. After a quick check in at the small hotel we took 'our' bus that had driven over the bridge by then and went straight to the Colossi of Memnon. It was a school excursion after all, so some cultural and historic stuff. The Colossi of Memnon are these huge statues that have been there for over 3000 years (Sometimes I forget how old Egypt is, so WoW), but most of us had already seen them before so we didn't really let the tour guide , who was with us for legal reasons do his job. Pretty sure he didn't quite like us, but that’s understandable. After taking a few pictures we continued the educating part of our trip by visiting Hatschepsut temple. I had seen that too but it's actually quite nice and in my opinion definitely worth visiting. It's also super interesting to learn about because there's soo many secrets yet to be explored by Egyptologists. And I'm pretty sure it was fun even to those who hate historical stuff and only tried to take pictures as touristy as possible, which is hilarious if you consider the fact that most my classmates are half Egyptian.

Later, after an amazing dinner that we got at the hotel, we had the evening to ourselves and it was awesome. Almost all of us went to the more urban and busy east bank of Luxor, specifically to the television road. That does have a weird name but is preeetty awesome with lots of cool shops and lots and lots of people. It's not a very touristy place, but all my friends are Egyptian so I'm used to being the only foreigner. After some window shopping (I bought a ring by 10 Pounds! Ten!!! I can't believe how cheap Luxor is compared to Hurghada...) and very iconic hanging out, we decided to head back home by ferry, together with the rest of the class. Funnily we met our teacher and tour guide there so pretty much everyone got home around the same time. We let the night come to an end by hanging out in the hotel's bar.

The next morning started with a wonderful and relaxed breakfast. There was no rushing because we did not have as many plans for the day. However when a few of the guys decided to visit Banana Island, me and my friends were happy to join. The small island located in the Nile River is a banana plantation as well as a tourist attraction. You usually go there with a small boat (of Feloka if there is wind - which is often not the case) and that is just what we did. I loved sitting on the boat's roof and admiring the beautiful scenery. You have the east bank, with all its hotels, Nile cruise ships and buildings on one side, and the west bank with all the beautiful green, small houses and very real Egyptian culture. (I'm speaking, small kids with donkeys, farmers, people hanging out drinking tea and so on) on the other. The island itself is not even too interesting. Especially if you're like me and hate bananas to death. Nevertheless it 

is still fun to walk through the small forest of bananas. 

After that short trip it was already time for us to leave, sadly. After checking out at the hotel and getting back on the bus, we drove all the way to Dandara, a ...well let's say town close to the city of Qena, where the beautiful Dandara Temple is located.

Dandara Temple!

It was the only temple we visited, that I hadn't seen before and it was really impressive and even pretty adventurous. With stairs, tunnels different floors and loads of rooms we even got lost a few times, but it was really beautiful and lots of fun. Especially the small chamber in the "basement" that was not easy to reach at all. If you ever visit Egypt, I can highly recommend this lesser known temple, as it is - in my opinion- very underrated. I mean obviously all of Upper Egypt is underrated, because most tourists mainly visit places like Hurghada, Sharm El Sheikh or Marsa Alam to enjoy a beach vacation, but still! Just go visit these awesome places, really :D 

And next? Well, our trip was coming to an end. We went back home. Everyone was pretty tired but we still used the time to play silly games for a while. We arrived sometime in the evening. Although the trip had been amazing, I was happy to be home.

a random pic that I took while on the bus...

All in all I enjoyed this time in Luxor as much as I enjoyed previous weekend-vacations I have spent there- maybe even a little more because I got to spend time with my friends and had lots of fun doing that!

Anyways, thanks a lot for reading, I hope you enjoy these kind of Blogosts :)

Nele

P.S: Sorry for the random arrangement of pictures in this blogpost, I fought against my laptop the whole day, trying to make this work...

aand Dandara again;)