Adham Compound Hotel Alexandria

The city of Alexandria was named in 331 BC after its founder, Alexander the Great, and as the seat of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, quickly became one of the greatest cities of the Hellenistic world, second only to Rome in size and wealth. However, upon the founding of Cairo by Egypt's medieval Islamic rulers, its status as the country’s capital ended, and it fell into a long decline. Today, however, it has returned to its former glory and is Egypt&#8217 ...

... major haze (health hazard) over Cairo. We noticed this phenomenon the night before while on the plane and 10 minutes from landing in Cairo but thought it was fog. If Alexandria is a relatively dirty city, then Cairo is downright filthy. It is like walking through a landfill. Cairo has a reeking (literally) inability to dispose and process waste. To say it is disgusting would be flattering.<br><br>We meet our new tour leader at 8 PM. There are so many people ...

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... McDonald's overtook the main strip.<br><br>it was roughly 4 hours driving from central Cairo and the scenery itself was rather boring. i remember driving to hurghada and seeing windfarms and unique sights in the distance. i even remember driving around 2 am and seeing a huge fire on the red sea about a mile off the coast. just burning on top of the water. apparently it was quite common for oil companies to do this sort of thing, but it ...

Day 76 April 27th (Monday) At sea and it is very rough. It is also quite cool as we need a jacket and the wind is really blowing. Day 77 April 28th (Tuesday) I got up about 2:30am and found that we were at anchor waiting in queue for our entry into the Suez Canal. The canal connects the Red Sea to the Mediterraean Sea and there are no locks as the two bodies of water are at the same sea level. The canal is 101 miles long and takes approximately ...

... promenade fronted by many turn of the (20th) century hotels and apartment buildings with faded romantic charm. After a lot of searching we found a tourist information center at the corner of one of the water front squares graced by a statue of Cleopatra. Even after getting a map of the city there we still got lost in the maze of small streets, and after witnessing killing of ...

... As we drove out of the city the houses and area improved. The journey to Cairo took 3 hours through very flat countryside with very few buildings. Most of the land here has been irrigated and they grow lots of different fruit and vegetables. Apparently if they stopped irrigating the land it would return to desert within two weeks. We saw a lot of odd shaped structures with holes in and were told that these were people kept pigeons to eventually eat ...

... and I handed my camera to her to look after. When I went to pick up my camera at the end she demanded I give her a different 100 Pound note. The note itself was in good condition but it had been sellotaped by me to repair the tear. I didn't have another 100 Pound note and even if I did I wouldn't have given her it. She was fuming at me. She slammed my bit of paper down with my number on it for my camera and almost threw my camera under the window pane ...

... So many options... Meanwhile the lives of Mr and Mrs R will be taking on a Groundhog Day-esque sheen of regularity.  So any attempt at regular e-mail updates would be even more tedious than the usual guff we send. Briefly, for the next 8 weeks our lives are going to be:  - get up 07:30,  - start college 09:00,  - spend 6 hours learning Arabic in its various forms,  - go home and hide in darkened room to avoid any more torture-by-Arabic (Mr R's view ...