Day 18: Luxor, Egypt

Viking Amun Riverboat

9 January 2026

We slept well in our lovely cabin and awoke around 7am, in the hope of seeing lots of hot air balloons flying over the Valley of the Kings. A group of about a dozen people from our boat got up at 4am to go out to the ballooning field, only to be told that conditions weren't suitable for flying today. They were very disappointed (obviously) but I would have loved to see the balloons as well.

We had a quiet morning after breakfast - just sitting on the sun deck under the shade of an awning reading a book and looking at the Nile. Beautiful!

At 10.30am, we all came to the lounge for a presentation on the history of Egypt (very interesting) and then went in for an early lunch before setting off on the buses to Dendera Temple - the temple of the goddess Hathor.

Unfortunately, the temple was almost 2 hours away, but it was well worth the trip. It's not one of the most popular temples, so we didn't have to battle the crowds either. It's an enormous site with hundreds of columns, all highly decorated. The difference with other temples is that it has retained its roof (which all temples would have originally had) - so the experience was much more like what an ancient Egyptian would have felt.

You could even go upstairs to the temple roof and look out over the site. Our guide was really good at explaining all the carvings and images, which made it all much more enjoyable. Some of the carvings retained the original colour of the paints, which was very impressive.

There was a gorgeous little carving showing all the different crowns a king would wear on different ceremonial occasions, there was the only image of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar ever found on a temple, there were lots of images of the goddess Hathor (who has the body of a woman and the ears and horns of a cow) and so many carvings on the ceiling (like an Egyptian Sistine Chapel). There were also quite a few temple cats there and our guide brought some food for them, which was so sweet! He said he's known them since they were kittens and always feeds them. 

We really enjoyed our time at the temple, but weren't so excited about the 2 hour trip back to the boat.

In the evening, we had a presentation of all the main crew members (the Captain, the Head Chef, the Chief  Engineer etc) at a special cocktail party. I don't think the Captain spoke much English - and he was dressed in a traditional Egyptian robe and turban. (Not exactly what we were expecting!) Everyone else was firmly dressed in Western clothes.

They then told us that we are visiting the Valley of the Kings tomorrow and have to be ready to leave at 8am. Great excitement!

We sat with an interesting American couple at dinner who have travelled extensively for the last 35 years (no kids!) and have been almost everywhere in the world. They were apologetic about Trump, so are the right type of American.