Blogs from Mediterranean, Egypt, Africa - page 9

Day 239 Heading to Alexandria we had high expectations of granduer and much historical relics, however we should have done more background research. Alexandria is a city that has been conqured many times and with the passing time much of it's relics have been destroyed or succumbed to the depths of the Mediteranian. Most of the city's hotels and cafe's are vintage in design dating back to the early 1900's when Alexandria was seen as a European city owned by the Egyptians. However, now much of the bars and cafes are closed, and the nightlife is restricted to shopping in the city centre. Hence, a little dissapointed but undeterred we set out to explore Alexandria. We found the Roman ampitheatre, now mere old ruins from the Ptolemaic times previously known as Park of Pan a pleasure ... read more

The entire group, with one exception, joined in a tour of Cairo and the Pyramids at Giza along with the Sphinx. The day dawned warm and partly cloudy and everyone was excited to see one of the great wonders of the World. Unfortunately, our 10:00 AM arrival ended up being 10:45 as Princess decided to bring boxes, freight and several local folks onboard before clearing the vessel for passenger disembarkation. Little did we realize this delay would have major consequence as our tour ended. Our guide was named Waleed and he was a nice young Egyptian man who spoke excellent English. Our tour director was Joe Michel, a Catholic resident, originally from Belgium and handles local tours for American Express. We arranged this as a private tour through a company named shoretrips.com. We have four other ... read more

Thursday October 23, 2008 DONE with classes at 2:30pm. So ready for a break. Used the afternoon to pack and rest up. We left for the airport around 9:30pm for our 1:15am flight. We arrived in Alexandria around 1am local time, one hour behind Athens’ time strangely. The airport itself was quite the shock - even smaller than Bangor! It was a single room, with one conveyor belt for luggage and quite run down. We had to buy tourist Visas and waited forever to go through the single passport line. Coming out of the line and walking through security, I noticed a man hand the customs officer a fifty as he walked through, failing to produce a passport. Welcome to Egypt! We took a cab to our hotel, about a 20 minute drive from the airport. ... read more

Have had a major culture shock recently. This week I have traveled through Egypt on my own and it has been tough to say the least. No one speaks english and I have been ripped off left, right and centre. But all is good...... because I am now in Alexandria and feeling very historically minded and cultured. It is currently Ramadaan here which means that everyone is fasting until 6pm everyday. This is a big problem because things are very quiet during the day.Yesterday I ate Mc Donalds by myself in the middle of this food court at a massive shopping centre. I was the only one eating and lots of people were staring at me. Very uncomfortable! Slowly but surely I am getting use to the stares because of my dress and revealing flesh (on ... read more

Friday 29th August After a long boring flight from Hong Kong via Bangkok and Amman we arrived in Cairo. We found the Royal Jordanian planes modern and roomy and the travel prayer comforting before each flight. We went through customs very quick at Cairo because we had pre-purchased visas in Australia. We met our driver, Anwar at the airport and left to pick-up our tour guide Randa. Randa invited us to have coffee in her home before leaving on our tour. Randa had a beautiful apartment filled with antiques, she made us a coffee and introduced us to her three lovely daughters. Anwar drove via the desert road to Alexandria where we visited the Catacombs, Pompeii's Pillar and the Roman Amphitheatre. The Catacombs were interesting and after climbing down into the second level Ronda showed us ... read more