We arrived into Alexandria late afternoon, successfully met, escorted through the much smaller station to our waiting limousine - a Skoda Octavia.
Now Alexandria is on the coast, our hotel we knew to be on the coast, so our driver left the station and headed through narrow streets until we saw the white crested waves of the Med - we had arrived. Well we thought we had.
Alexandria is on the coast, it has a coast road. What we didn't realise it was a very long one.
Nominally a six lane road, three in each direction that quite often descends into six or seven in each direction or randomly down to two it is the city's main artery. Following the coastline the road weaves in huge sweeps revealing headland after headland. It turns out this coast road is over 25km long!
A quiet night, first watching the sun sink slowly beneath the sea, a light meal and so to bed. For my sins I actually watched a movie on my iPad....oh well.
Today we met Nancy who was to be our guide for the morning. She warmly welcomed us to Free Egypt and explained (reasonably) frequently how life was better/going to get better now that the old regime had gone whilst pointing out various buildings that the said regime had taken over for their personal use. The difference in Alex and Cairo is quite marked - it is visibly a 'seaside' town with it's beach side cafe's - the whole place seems much more relaxed than Cairo - the boys and men staring less at Laura.
There was one sad part of our Nancy's story which she quickly skimmed over. This a lady probably in her mid to late twenties with a BA in her pocket was studying for her Masters but it was taking some time because she had had one child which had died but now has a six month old son. She didn't dwell on her loss even for a blink of an eye and outwardly neither did we but both Laura and I felt the pain.
Laura and I discussed later the statement 'travel broadens the mind'. This trip certainly has done that.
Peter Jackson
Mobile: +44(0)7887 794396
Sent from my BlackBerry from Vodafone- so please excuse the brevity and the typing mistakes!
Please reply to pj@rede2.com. Thank You
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