Alexandria

Alexandria's harbour

Fort Qaitbey

Yesterday we made a day trip up to Alexandria, on the Mediterranean Coast. It was a long day, leaving the guest house at 6:30 to get the train, 2.5 hours on the train, and the reverse at the end of the day. Still, it was great to get out of Cairo for the day. Alexandria is really ancient, having first been established around 330BC by Alexandra the Great, but its fortunes have waxed and waned through the centuries. Under Ptolemy, it became one of the major cities with mixed Roman and Egyptian architecture, and included a very famous library way back when Cleopatra was the boss there. Alexandria's demise began when the Muslim armies invaded Egypt, and it hasn't ever really recovered properly. Napoleon had a crack at rejuvenating it  in the 1800s, but now it's just another dirty Egyptian city, with its main attractions being its coast and a few historic ruins.

It was so lovely to see the sea again. You had to use your imagination, though, because the beachline is one long line of trash. It seems such a huge problem in developing countries, where modern living clashes with ancient infrastructure - the result is rubbish with nowhere to go. It is totally normal to see massive piles of rubbish beside low-quality high-rise housing blocks, where the residents simply hurl it all out the window. It's not like that everwhere, but it is a bit depressing if you dwell on it too much. We found the same thing to be true in Samoa.

Anyway, we enjoyed visiting the catacombs, Fort Qaitbey (I think this was the setting for James Bond jumping off the fort into the sea on a horse in "Never Say Never Again") and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the modern-day equivalent of the old famous library. The traffic isn't so diabolical as Cairo, so it was a relatively restful place (restful is a relative term in Egypt, of course).

Sunset over Alexandria harbour

This is my last blog entry, since we are due to fly out to England tonight and we will be back in NZ on Jan 26th. Things I am looking forward to in Nelson:

• being able to sleep at night
• being able to cross the road without experiencing a year's worth of adrenalin fix in 20 seconds
• being able to drink the tap water
• not having to negotiate for everything
• HOME!

To those of you who have followed this blog, thanks for persevering, and see you soon!