Going back to hell (aka Cairo)

Trip Start Mar 07, 2006
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5
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Trip End Jun 07, 2006


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Where I stayed
(Cairo hotels)

Flag of Egypt  ,
Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Travelling all day by bus to Alexandria through the nothingness of the desert landscape, boy am I glad we have an mp3 player. Landed in Alex about 4pm and the first person we spoke to was on our case with "Help me get to Australia" spiel and at the risk of sounding like we're unfeeling it just made us wish we'd never left Siwa all the more. Definitely not looking forward to getting back to Cairo and all the madness that goes along with it.

We had to change from bus to train in Alex and sitting on the platform we were definitely the source of much entertainment, felt like we were goldfish in a bowl the amount of people staring at us.

We found the locals pretty entertaining though, you've never seen so many people crammed into a carriage on a train, to the point where the doorways are full of people hanging on the outside of the train and even hanging off each other, there were people trying to climb in the windows and one chancer took a flying leap over the top of everyone else crammed into the doorway, bit like crowd surfing I guess!! Thank god for cheap 1st class tickets is all I can say.

We're staying at the Pension Roma in Cairo this time a really lovely old 1940's style hotel, double the price of everything else at 7.50pounds/night but worth it for the spotlessly clean bathrooms. Seems all these old buildings in Cairo still have funtioning bird cage elevators, even though it's often faster to climb the stairs it seems.
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