After touring the temple, we met up with our cruise ship -- the Crowne Emporer run by Travco in Egypt. Our rooms were great with large windows looking out over the Nile. River cruise ships are much smaller than ocean cruisers, and just have the basics -- rooms, dining hall, sundeck with pool, and a few lounges. Before leaving Aswan in the evening, we had a chance to take a felucca sail on the Nile. These are older style sailboats that sail to Kitchner's Island -- a botanical garden.
The boat continued cruising most of the day which gave us a break from touring. We spent the morning and afternoon lounging on the sundeck, watching the banks of the Nile go by. In the early afternoon, we stopped to tour the Temple of Horus in Edfu, (also known as the falcon god). This temple was buried under sand and silt for nearly 2000 years and therefore is one of the best preserved temples. The pylon at the entrance of the temple is huge (118 feet high). Inside, you can still see some of the paint that once decorated the columns.
When the cruiseship was stopped at any port to visit a temple or tie up in a city, usually many other cruiseships were there as well. The boats would stack up 5 or more deep next to each other, lining up all the entrance doors. Everytime we left the ship, we would get to cross through all the other boats we were stacked with. Most of the ships look pretty much the same. Later that evening we continued cruising towards Luxor.
