After we'd visited the West Bank and the Valley of the Kings as a group, the next day I hoped to take a balloon ride over the the same area but the wind wasn't cooperating; we'd have blown over Luxor's airport! But I went back over myself on the cheap, easy ferry, and with the help of a guide and cabbie, I went to various temples and visited Sheikh abd el-Qurna and New Gurnia.
OLD Gourna (Sheikh abd el-Qurna) is the location of the Tombs of the Nobles, and its residents have a certain renown for being able to bring up suspiciously authentic Egyptian relics from their cellars. NEW Gourna is about five miles back downhill towards the Nile. Built by the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy in the 1950's-60's, it was intended to lure the residents of Old Gourna away from their family homes and the continuing looting of the Nobles' tombs. It didn't work, though today descendents do live there. Perhaps part of the problem was that Fathy didn't allow for indoor plumbing, preferring to watch the straght-backed Egyptian women walk up from the Nile with their water jugs on their heads. Today there's a mosque, a theatre, and Fathy's home, as well as more modern buildings - WITH plumbing.
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