When we awoke the morning of Day 4 of our holiday on board the Princess Eman, we found ourselves anchored on terra firma! We had an early start to beat the tourist hordes, and were at the Edfu temple at 7 am, after travelling in that uniquely Egyptian mode of transport, the horse drawn "caleche". We trotted up to the temple in a cloud of fresh horse dung aroma, and found hordes of other tourists with a similar idea. Nonetheless, it was good to be sightseeing before the blaze of the Egyptian sun became too merciless, and we had enough time for photographs as well.

Edfu, another Ptolemaic temple of Horus, about 60 miles south of Luxor, is the most completely preserved temple in Egypt, almost in near perfect condition. Like most Egyptian monuments, the walls have interesting depictions, including the victory of Horus over his bad uncle Seth who killed his father Osiris; the joyful annual wedding visit of goddess Hathor, who journeyed from Denderah to be united with her husband Horus and so on. What we found interesting was to identify the kind of capitals that the various columns had, including palm leaf, lotus, open and closed papyrus, which are uniquely Egyptian. In Edfu, many cartouches (cartouches were like the king's emblem, which had his coronation name) have nothing sculpted in them. Our guide explained that this was because so many Ptolemies overthrew one another and in such quick succession that the priests and architects decided to leave them blank until there was some stability in rulership!

Almost as soon as we returned to the boat, she started sailing again! We were in Luxor by noon, and that was the end of our sailing time, because we ended up docking for two days at Luxor after that.