Waiting...

At Luxor Temple one day in February:

Peek-a-Boo Sphinxes

Yesterday, I caught these sphinxes at Luxor Temple playing a game of peek-a-boo among the trees:

The Lovely Sefkhet-Abwy

First visit this season to Luxor Temple this morning. Had to re-visit my lovely Sefkhet-Abwy on the back of a seated colossal statue of Ramses II:

She wears the most beautiful leopard skin:

Protesters to the Rescue...Again!

Many of you will remember the human chain of protestors/demonstrators that protected the Egyptian Museum during the early days of the revolution, two years ago now. Well, they had to come to the rescue again, when police and government forces ignored the Semiramis Hotel's calls for help when armed thugs invaded. No "official help" came for three hours! Please help me get the word out to as many people as possible that it was anti-government protestors that helped out. You know the western media will focus on the lawlessness of Egypt right now and mostly ignore any "good news". Check out the El Ahram article here: "Egypt protesters come to aid of ransacked Intercontinental hotel".

Meanwhile, here in Luxor, it's pretty much business (not that there's a lot of that!) as usual. We ate at The Roof on Monday night, and were treated to "dinner theater" when a group of young people gathered in the plaza to commemorate the 25th of January/Revolution Day and chanted, sang, danced, drummed, listened to speeches and marched, all in a peaceful and laid back manner. It was too dark to get photos of the gathering, but here are a couple of Luxor Temple by night:

And they still serve the best lamb chops, lemon juice ('asir lamoon), and shisha in Egypt (and beyond)!

Testing...Testing...

I am the proud owner of a new Canon PowerShot S100 (Thanks to KV and CG for their help in making the decision to purchase this particular camera and thanks to ES for transporting the camera and SL for bringing the great retro camera case to Luxor!). What follows are some of the first shots I have taken with this lovely camera. These are all "Automatic" or "Scene Selection". I haven't had a chance yet to explore the semi- and fully manual options available to me. I'm going to have to "re-learn" manual photography as I haven't had to use those skills in years!

Flora:

Poinsettia

Red Flame (Clerodendron splendens)

Persian Acacia (Albizia julibrissin)

Fauna:

Look closely for the kite in the palm tree!

Kite near their nest

Kite again

Bee-eater just before take-off!

Buttons blending in

Beau doing his third favorite thing (after eating and playing)

Landscape, Waterscape, Moon:

Gurn with clouds

Felucca at sunset

Handheld moon

 Sunsets:

Sunset and felucca from the roof

Sunset and felucca from the Winter Palace

Sunset from MY roof 

End of that same sunset

Architecture--"Old":

Luxor Temple - Colonnade Hall

Luxor Temple - Layers of history

Architecture--"New":

Winter Palace with a golden glow at sunset

Luxor door

Out and About in Luxor

Finally! Anait and did a shopping walkabout last Sunday, with a well-deserved stop at The Roof for lemon juice (theirs is the best!), wonderful coffee (the real thing with cardamom) for Anait, and my first shisha of the season (plum). The light everywhere was wonderful, as it tends to be in the mid-to-late afternoon. And of course the views from The Roof are magnificent!

Our resident egret who always seems to hang around near CH:

 On our brief walk through the tourist souk:

Bougainvillea is very opportunistic. Here it's used the trunk of the palm tree to establish itself:

One of the ubiquitous homages to ancient Egyptian influence:

Saturday Seshat

Seshat-Sefkhet‛abu in Luxor Temple (south wall on the eastern side of  the court of Ramesses II):