#luqsor

L'Année du Cheval s'annonce et avec elle, une très longue série équine de photos (sur plusieurs jours) !

Ici, des chevaux de traits tirant calèche, charrette ou même une voiture (les photos en noir et blanc ne sont évidemment pas de moi mais de mon grand-père maternel)

Vichel (Auvergne), été 1950. Curieuse marque de voiture, ni une 4 CV, ni une 2 CV...mais une 1 CV !

Douai (Nord), Fêtes de Gayant

Louxor (Egypte)

Compiègne (Picardie)

EGITTO IN TOUR, DIECI GIORNI DI RACCONTI

L’Egitto, la terra dei Faraoni, di Cheope, di Tutakhamon, di Ramses II, di Alessandro Magno, di Cleopatra, la terra delle piramidi, delle sfingi, delle tombe reali e quelle non reali, la terra del Nilo, dei geroglifici, dei papiri, dei templi, la terra dei musei egizi, incluso il costruendo GEM (Grand Egyptian Museum), la terra delle esplorazioni anche quella della depredazione del patrimonio…

Today I dislike my job and most of my coworkers, today I overslept, today I listened to boys in the street openly debate whether I am hot or not and clenched my jaw and did nothing, because the reality is that saying something only makes it worse.

I suppose that is better than the time a dude in Luqsor leaned alll the way out of his stupid tourist-trap horse-drawn carriage to inform me that "I like your ass. I like it soooooooo much. I really, really like your ass" etc. for what felt like forever (but was probably a max of 20 seconds).

After the week of conferences and whatnot in Ain Sokhna, my immediate boss, a Dutch colleague, and a friend of the boss all took the sleeper train down to Luxor in Upper Egypt.

Let me explain. Upper Egypt is actually southern Egypt, as in, further inland. It's called Upper Egypt because it's up the Nile from Cairo. Luxor, of course, was once the religious and political capital of the Egyptian Empire; the Valley of the Kings is there, as well as some incredible temples and a lovely little museum. For more, I refer you to Wikipedia.

Anyway, as I said, we took the sleeper train, which was awesome. I mean, it was not the most comfortable night's sleep of my life, but I still felt like I was in an old whodunit murder mystery. A cute little old man showed up and folded the beds down (it was MAGIC suddenly instead of a couch we had BUNK BEDS), we went to sleep, and when we woke up we were in Luxor. Loves it. We stayed in a lovely little hotel called Nefertiti, which was both wonderful and cheap (70 LE! That's, like, $11.50!) with a rooftop terrace and courtyard restaurant. AW YEAH.

Since we arrived at approximately ass o clock AM, we spent the day touring. We went to Qarnaq, the museum, and the Luqsor temple, after which we were exhausted enough for a herd of cattle. Here are a couple more pictures, because I mean come ON:

There will be more later.

ANYWAY. We spent a relaxing evening smoking shisha in the hotel, and the next day went to the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, and an alabaster workshop where a toothless man insisted on giving me chunks of rocks. We then took the train further south, up the Nile to a little town called Derawa. That is where things got REALLY interesting (if you ask me), so I think I'll give it its own post.