Written at 9:30 PM on Nov. 4. Got the 6 AM wake up call and jumped out of bed to the balcony to see the view. Wow, there it is, the west bank of Thebes. All of the daily balloon rides were just taking off and I could actually see Hatshepsuts’ Temple accross the Nile!
What a beautiful day. I went down to the front desk at 6:30 to find out if this morning someone might know something about the time the tour was going to start. They told me “ Oh, look over there. We have a board for Kuoni with schedules.” That sure would have helped last night. The board said the Kuoni representative would be in the lobby everyday at 9:30.
I went back to the room to give our AWT tour guide a call and hoped that the tour group had not already left for the temples. He was very polite and told me that the tour would begin at 10:30 in the lobby area. Now I felt a little better. At least we had not missed anything!
After breakfast we went down to the lobby to talk to the Kuoni representative. It was about 9:15. I requested a change of hotels and told her for multiple reasons (contact with family members in ill health, work and the blog) that internet access was essential and that we were not happy with this hotel. She told us we could go to the Winter Palace to use our computer. “They have wireless there”. A 15 min. walk each way with a laptop in tow every time I wanted to log on. I don't think so. I told her we needed to be transferred to the Winter Palace but she said she could not help. She then went to the front desk and called the representative from AWT (the younger man) to come down to talk to us. We explained that we needed to be moved or some type of resolution needed to be made for daily internet access. He offered to drive us. A very nice gesture but not something I wanted to do every day. He was very polite and we may have to take him up on his offer but not really satisfied with this as resolution for all our complaints. We also told him that we needed to know what times the tour would start and end each day because we had to arrange a time to meet with Mr. Wazery, the director of the Valley of the Kings, to see the tombs of Amenhetep II and Horemheb. We have received antiquity permits from Dr. Hawass to see these two tombs. The tour guide said that he would check and get back to us by the end of the day.
We decided to wait in the lobby for the bus and who do you think walked up and sat down right beside us, none other than Dr. Weeks and his wife Susan. I introduced myself and made a little small talk. As it turned out he was on our bus that day. I was able to sit right across from him during the entire day. We talked about several different areas of excavation currently underway in KV 5 (the tomb of the sons of Rameses II).
After getting on the bus we then went to the Winter Palace to pick up other people. I could not believe this was actually happening. After being told by AWT that for “group integrity and insurance purposes” we must all stay at the same motel, here we are stopping to pick up 4 people at the Winter Palace. Well, I wasn’t going to let it ruin the rest of my day but it really made me mad.
After about a half hour drive south of Luxor and over the bridge to the ticket office just past the Colossi of Memnon, the busses stopped to let the guides out to go get our tickets for the day. The first stop was at the northern end of the west bank – Sety I’s temple. When everyone got off of the busses and gathered in the first courtyard of Sety I’s temple Dr. Weeks gave a small explanation of what we would be doing the rest of the day. He is not allowed to explain about the things we would be seeing.
