Not quite ice cold but definitely cooler than Cairo! Geoff’s school follow the Coptic calendar for Easter so he only gets a week for Easter compared with my 2 weeks. We had decided to travel and see another part of Egypt and Thomas cook were offering 3 nights at the Borg el Arab hotel as one of the Easter special deals, with so many Star Trek fans in the family we couldn’t resist!
The road from Cairo to Alexandria is 250 km long and varies between 4 lanes of visible tarmac to two lanes with speed bumps and sand.As far as I could tell there is still construction work being done as the speed bumps and change in lane size and road quality occurs when we were swapping from 2 to 4 lanes. At these point enterprising Egyptians had set up stalls to sell drinks and crisps to the motorists as they passed by, some even had what I assumed to be large wooden sticks for herding camels. We choose to travel by taxi as apposed to train or even flying. The train is 50 LE (£5) per person to get there but then there is the added hassle of a taxi at either end and while we have trustworthy and reliable taxi drivers here in Cairo we were not too certain about the quality of them in Alex. A taxi cost us 500 Le (£50) door to door and was well worth the cost as Ahmed, our driver, took us into Alex to see some of the sights before leaving us at the hotel.
Alexandria National Museum
We were actually hoping to go to Graeco Roman museum but locals directed us here, which is just as well as the tourist policeman informed us the Roman museum was shut for renovation. When we checked later in our Lonely Planet travel book for Egypt printed in May 2010 the entry read:
“there is no official completion date for this work, and the museum may be shuttered for the foreseeable future”
How right they were! The National Museum was well worth a look, it was well laid out, exhibits had labels in English and the quality of the exhibits was excellent. As with many museums you were not allowed to take pictures inside but I did snap Maddy and Geoff on the way out before we moved on.
Fort Qaitby
The Fort was built in the 1480's by Sultan Qaitbey, on the site of Alexandria's ancient lighthouse. Parts of the remains of the lighthouse can be seen in the construction of the old fort. It looks like your classic sandcastle! The Castle was great to walk round with some stunning view of Alexandria.
The building in the centre across the harbour in picture 6 is the library in Alexandria! It was sad to find that for a city with such a rich history very little had been preserved.
Dead Fish / Live Fish
Just next to the fort was a museum of dead fish and a hydro biological museum that claimed to contain many rare fish – not true but at 5Le (50p) we took a look. The dead fish were interesting but the live fish were not as well kept at you might want. Certainly not the quite of London zoo, or the signs telling you not to tap the glass or use your flash . . . .
From here we went to McDonalds before heading west to the hotel as it lay 52km to the west of Alexandria. We took the scenic route looking for the village of Borg El Arab (spelt on the road signs Porg el Arab), but eventually we got the idea we were nowhere near the sea and headed to the coast and the Matruh Dessert Road that links Alexandria with Libya. From here it was easy, the hotel was well sign posted and we made it with no further ado. Two rooms were ready for us a double and a twin, we had hoped Maddison’s friend Louisa would have made it but her parents went to Suknah so Maddy had the room all to herself. There was no wi-fi available so Geoff and Maddy had to make do with the gams they had on their laptops and I read (kindles are ace) some Martin Lloyd-Jones. We did bring some DVD’s with us, as seasoned travellers you work out the tv isn’t always what you expect! However, they carried BBC world news, MBC action, Dubai 1 and some of the other channels we watch in Cairo so the first evening went quite quickly. Geoff and I went for a bit of a wander around the resort looking for shops and found a small shopping precinct for people staying in the surrounding apartments (the KFC was shut down though so we did without dinner as McDonalds had been quite late).
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