A quiet day.
I felt great, almost euphoric when I first woke up. Simon had to get up before 6 to be ready for the day’s adventure and I got to sleep in. I got up around 9 and had a late breakfast and a coffee in the lounge bar. I was still a bit woozy and headachy so went back to bed.
Then it was lunch and a chance to chill out in the library with a cold drink and finish “Death on the Nile”. Normally I have no idea who the bad guy is when I read one of these, but having seen the movie last year I knew who it was. (No spoilers). It was still a ripping yarn, with a couple of romances chucked in for good measure. A fun read, especially when you’re traveling in exactly the same area.
After an early dinner I felt well enough to go to a sound and light show at Phillae temple. It was still over forty degrees but was somehow more bearable out of the sun. Also I was better prepared, with a wet face cloth to cool me down, and an electrolyte drink.
The temple is located on an island near Aswan so you have to take a little boat ride to get there. The show took around an hour and was divided into three sections which gave us an opportunity to see a bit more of the site as we walked around to each new location. The light part wasn’t any fancy laser show, basically it was just lighting up different parts of the Temple as they played the recorded plummy voices of a bunch of British Shakespearean actors pretending to be various gods. “Oh Isis! I, your wife and sister (there was a lot of that going on in royal families in those days), Osiris am weeping in sadness and rage at the cruel trick played on you that saw you thrown into the river Nile in a coffin and drowned!” A bit cheesy but still worthwhile. By coincidence it was also a full moon so the whole place looked quite magical.
It was after ten by the time we were back on the boat, so it was straight to bed for an early start in the morning.