After a couple of days of enforced, and rather enjoyable, pool-side relaxation within the confines of the Winter Palace, I feel just about strong enough to venture out to visit Luxor Museum on our final morning. Coman is far from convinced it’s a good idea, especially as we’re both still taking it in turns as to who has the dodgiest digestive system due to our run-in with the cruise ship salad buffet, but I’m determined that we shall explore at least a little more of ancient Thebes. 

However it’s obvious within thirty yards of leaving the hotel that I’m not going to make the twenty minute walk in blazing sunshine along the Corniche to the museum. So we take a taxi for the princely sun of 80p and it’s worth every penny! 

The museum was opened in 1975 and is still modern in design, despite showing a flickery old National Geographic film narrated by Omar Sherif as you enter. And it houses some of the finest exhibits from Luxor’s golden age, the New Kingdom dynasties that flourished about 1000 years after the Great Pyramids were constructed. Statues and relics from the eras of Tutankhamen, Rameses II, the heretic king Akhantun and his Queen Nefertiti, the all-powerful yet diplomatic Amanhotep III and Egypt’s greatest warrior king Tuthmosis III, fill the beautifully laid out and curated space. 

The information is clearly revealed, the craftsmanship superb, the sophistication absolutely mind blowing and in addition to the great statues of pharaohs and gods it includes the mummy of Rameses I as well as many exhibits displaying the lives of ordinary Egyptians, the development of their written language and currency and much more besides. 

As we wander round at quite a slow pace, taking it all in, different school groups take turns from each other spilling through the rooms, all snapping selfies and chatting loudly as they go.

Sure enough, schoolgirls in multi-coloured headscarves all want photos with us and I ask them if we are now part of their school projects, which they giggle shyly at. But what they’re going to think when they look back and see a middle-aged man clearly ravaged by a flu-like virus in their photos is anyone’s guess. To be honest, the mummies look healthier than I currently feel!

As we walk back from the museum, along the Corniche, we’re stopped by a young boy in traditional dress called Zachariah, who is maybe 12 years old and from a special school nearby. He keeps asking if we’re English and smiling at us, saying “Hello, hello”. And then all of a sudden he produces a school book and says the words “King Lear” and shows us paragraphs from it but it’s clear he doesn’t understand a word of it. He’s very smiley and very sweet but seems quite confused and won’t really leave our side. Eventually he asks us for a dollar, so I dig out some money and press it into his hand and we wish him well. “Hello, hello” he says again by means of farewell. 

The local ‘Ferrari’ drivers are a lot less confused though as they pitch for your business while we slowly make our way past Luxor Temple in the hot sun, back to the hotel. I’ve barely even the energy left to explain we’ve only got metres left to go, and just say weakly to one very persistent driver sat atop his horse-drawn carriage that we don’t need one now. 

“Not now!?” he exclaims exasperatedly. “Later? This afternoon? This evening? Tomorrow? The next life?!?!”

We make it back into the sanctuary of the Winter Palace and sink down into chairs by the pool awaiting our transfer to the airport, and a final hotel for the night in Cairo before our journey home. Coman is still up and down from the food poisoning and I’m ravaged by the flu-like virus, but what an adventure it’s been. A true trip through the many ages of Egypt, from antiquity to Islam, colonial to the modern day; it’s been a delight. 

We’ll be back again one day, inshallah!!