Blogs from Mediterranean, Egypt, Africa

After the great start the previous day at Giza and the museum it was time to hit the road, next stop Alexandria...a quick one day/night visit where we would take in three sites: the Citadel, Catacombs and Library... Left bright and early, and were introduced to the concept of Tourist Police, where we had an armed plain-clothes policeman join us for the drive to Alexandria...wondered if it was to keep an eye on us but turns out it was for our protection: these tourist police would randomly join guided tours in transit to ensure their safety, very cool...the drive itself took about three uneventful hours before we arrived at our first stop in Alexandria: the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa... Some history for y'all: Built in the 2nd century AD, the necropolis consists of a series ... read more

So today we are going through the Suez Canal which is one of my bucket list items WHY I have no idea but it is. I could have got up really early like other passengers did to see us enter the canal but to be honest did not quite make this so got up at a normal hour and saw we were already going through it. Well the Suez Canal is what I can describe as okay but not something I would rave about apart from the engineering of it - I cannot imagine how this could happen and how it was engineered. And time would tell that I had missed almost nothing by not getting up at the crack of dawn but I now know it was a spectacular sunrise so maybe I am wrong ... read more

"In questa Casa d'Italia, edificata dalla fede e dall'amore della terra d'origine, vivono e si perpetuano, con l'opera delle istituzioni italiane sotto i segni gloriosi dello scudo sabaudo e del fascio littorio, lo spirito millenario della patria, il culto della lingua di Dante, la tradizione fulgente della triplice vittoria, la potenza animatrice di Roma ridivenuta imperiale. XXVIII Ottobre MCMXXXVIII - XVI regnando Vittorio Emanuele III essendo duce del fascismo e capo del governo Benito Mussolini fondatore dell'impero." Chissa', sara', sta di fatto che gli italiani sembrano aver lasciato davvero un buon ricordo qui in Egitto, e dovevo capitare per caso a Port Said per averne una vera conferma. Non proprio per caso perche' e' in questa citta' che inizia il canale di Suez e qui si deve venire per ammirare le gigantesche navi che, sfilando davanti ... read more

Marsa Alam is one of the best spots to dive along Egypt’s Red Sea coast, at least so I had read. What it failed to mention is that the town itself is a bit of a hole. I can handle holes though, but this particular hole seems to cater to restaurants that present you with one menu when ordering your food, and another one with different prices when you want to pay your bill. It happened twice, in two separate establishments. And I only went to two restaurants, so that is a ratio of 100 percent! Obviously I did not pay the altered prices… 1) Thou shalt not change thou menu on thou customers! And the diving? It was… alright. The visibility was great, but apart from that I didn’t see anything I haven’t seen before. ... read more

Our alarm went off at 5:30 am this morning, and since we both slept really well last night we woke up refreshed and ready to go. We got to our hotel last evening about 10:30. Our flight from Frankfurt was delayed about 2 hrs, while we waited on the tarmac. The flight was full of small active children, and there were no individual entertainment consoles. It was an old plane with the drop down monitors. They played an old Laurel and Hardy movie first (in English), followed by a Ninja Mutant Turtle movie (in English with Arabic subtitles). Not sure how they came up with that selection! I listened to music on my phone. Had a not bad veggie dinner. Nobody was sitting in between Susan and me so we could spread out a bit. Nobody ... read more