Valley of the Kings

So AJ and I left work one day and bicycled to the Valley of the Kings. As you can see from the balloon picture, our digs at the Casa Italia overlooked the desert beside the VK so we were already right there in the hood. The freaky thing is that the road into the VK is uphill the entire way, but it looks like it is downhill. See the picture of me riding on the bike? It looks like I am facing downhill, right? But NO!!!! I am pedaling UPHILL. The whole place is an optical illusion. Like the laws of physics stop working there at the place where the kings were buried. And the mountains look alive.
Anyway, after leaving and riding downhill all the way, we wanted junk food. So we pedaled to a circle K (or the local equivalent) and bought chocolate and diet coke and made friends with the cashier who said his name was David Beckham :)
I took one illegal picture in one of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, when the guard wasn't looking, so I posted it here. It is not all that great, but for an illicit photo taken on the sly from hip level while walking it's ok.

Tombs of the Nobles

After work one day Mariam got us to stop by the tombs of the nobles which is somewhere on the West Bank near where we work. We went inside a few of the tombs and they are pretty magnificent in a claustrophobia-inducing kind of way. One of them, the tomb of Senn-Nefer (you can google it for pictures) was particularly frightening and beautiful. You have to walk down a long ladder and then climb through a very low corridor where I had to bend over halfway and sort of scoot and the air is warm and stale and it is scary. I felt my heart starting to race at one point and I thought I couldn't breathe. But the ceiling is painted in a grape vineyard and once inside the main part of the tomb, the ceiling goes up some and there are gorgeous painted columns and walls and it is just terrifically beautiful. Of course you can't take pictures so I was going to work out a system with AJ where I would have a panic attack and have to be "helped" out of the tomb, leaving him to take cool pictures. It wouldn't be much of a stretch. Unfortunately we didn't get around to going back so we never got to put the plan into action. Maybe we'll get to go back next year and follow through.