I think there is a common misconception that Cairo is where most of your time should be spent, but actually Luxor has more interesting and beautiful historical sites than anywhere else I have seen in Egypt. It has the famed Luxor Temple, Karnak Temple, and Valley of Kings. While those are magnificent and must-sees, all of these locations are so touristic and you are just crammed in with the million other tourists. My favorite places were the less known places that most tourists don’t take the time to visit!
In awe at Karnak Temple
Imagine being by yourself in an ornately painted ancient tomb and feeling like you are just discovering it for the first time. Then you realize that it has just been opened to the public so you are in fact only one of a small number of people that have actually been inside! To get this feeling you must visit the tombs of the nobles and Deir el-Medina, to see the tombs of the workers. In the Valley of the Kings, and the Valley of the Queens, most of the tomb paintings were of the afterlife and images of different gods, basically imagined fantasy scenes. In tombs of the nobles and of the workers, they painted daily life activities. It seemed more like a journal with photos of their daily life in ancient Egypt. It is really amazing to see actually how similar we are today to the ancient Egyptians. While it seems like technology is so advanced and that we are so different than humans in the past, you can see from the paintings that not much fundamentally has changed. You can see them enjoying dinner with their family, having a party, hunting, and dancing. You can see how they had such an organized infrastructure and had jobs such as making shoes, sculptures, and wine.