Slept in a little. Woke up a little after ten. Evan and I both showered and packed our bags. We walked downstairs and checked out. They offered to hold onto our bags until our train came. We accepted and left our bags behind the front desk.
We went to the upstairs patio and had our breakfast. We sat on the roof and ate slowly. It was a small meal, but that was fine by us (a half week of gorging was getting old). We read a bit before going out.
Our first stop was the train station. We had no problem finding tickets for that night. Although everyone told us there wasn’t going to be any left. It cost us just over a hundred pounds which was 50 less than on the way up. Not a bad deal.
We spent the rest of the day walking around Luxor and checking out the non-tourist parts of town. We found a really old Coptic church which was being rebuilt. We went in and checked it out. Really gorgeous, almost cathedralesque. Afterwards we continued to walk around. We ended up in the souks looking at wares and browsing stores. Evan ended up purchasing a scarf.
Eventually we made it out of the markets and decided to take a seat in a coffee shop. We had a couple cups of coffee and chatted with the owner of the store. When we were leaving we asked him where we might find a deck of cards. He took us to a nearby store and inquired. When they didn’t have any he dragged us around the city until he found some. Really nice of him.
During our wonderings we met two other interesting characters. Both of which tried to sell us drugs. One was a 12 year old kid who offered us hash… we ended up running into him later with his older brother who he deals for. It was really sad to see a kid his age involved in that. The other was a real pushy 30 year old who kept trying to drag us to his house. I eventually told him that if he touched me again I’d break his nose… that got the point across.
We had a late lunch at a chicken shop. Each of us had half a chicken, some bread, salad, and tahina. A good meal. Real tasty. Afterwards we walked back to the hotel to cool our heals before catching the train.
We spent the next few hours chilling on the roof of the hotel. It was nice to just relax and read. I read some of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and did some journaling. We also spent some time talking to the guys that work at the hotel.
With an hour and half left before our train we decided to go to the souks and grab dinner. We grabbed our bags and set off to the markets. We walked around for a half hour before we found a place that served tagen. Tagen is a dish similar to stew that has lamb, potatoes, veggies, etc. It was really good and we got a whole bunch of food.
From there we walked to the train station. We got there a few minutes early and bought some water. The train arrived and we jumped on. We found our seats in a private(ish) cabin. It was a small cabin with six seats. Evan and I occupied two of them and another two Americans took the other. Later on we were joined by two Egyptians in the last two seats.
We spent the next waking hours watching a few episodes of The Office and talking to our American companions. They had been doing a two month trip through the Middle East which sounded absolutely epic.
Eventually we all drifted off to sleep.
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