Day 8: Afternoon and Evening

We were only at Abu Simbel for a few hours. Actually, according to my camera, I took my first picture there at 8:05 AM and my last at 9:25. By now, though, it was scorching. We were very glad for shade, air conditioning, and water as we retraced our steps from bus to shuttle to plane to bus back to our "home", the River Anuket. We were back on board by 11:30 AM, well in time for lunch.

Dad likes the Egypt Air planes, so here is one:



I admire the Eye of Horus logo.

The rest of the afternoon was spent lolling around blissfully. Daddy napped in the room, and I went to the sun deck. I waded in the pool, dunked under in the deep section, and lay in the sun for five minutes until a) I was dry, and b) I was too hot to stay in the sun for one more instant. The sun is really strong here!

I retreated under the shaded area and admired the view.

They're building a new hotel just across from where we docked,



and the boats are so close that we could people-watch from ours to the neighbors'.



After a lovely dinner, some of us went shopping at the Aswan Spice Market:



This is kinda like the Disney version of the Khan el-Khalili. It's smaller, cleaner, less crowded, PAVED, and altogether more like something I could deal with. Since it was well past sunset, the temperature was lovely, too - maybe the upper 70s?



It was still largely the same merchandise we'd seen since Giza, the merchants still read our names off our tags and called to us, and we still had to bargain for our purchases, which I still can't do worth a darn, but I had better luck with my shopping. I bought some hibiscus tea, and I found a cat statue for Sarah! This bargaining, while simultaneously doing currency conversions, is kinda hard, though! The guy started out at £300.00 for the cat, which is about $60 American, and we ended up at £95.00 for the cat and a statue of Horus that I ended up keeping myself - about $19.00. However, I get the feeling that the shopkeeper still thought he'd overcharged me because he actually threw in a couple of faience scarab beads for nothing.

But it was a lot more fun for me!