Muḩarram Bak

Today was an early start. We were doing a day trip to Alexandria, and the bus picked us up from our hotel at 6:45am. Unfortunately Sam wasn’t feeling well so he decided to stay home, but the rest of us were bundled into the bus and taken on the long drive to the coast. It took about three hours, and on arrival we were met by our tour guide for the day. We were a little hesitant after our experience at the pyramids but he turned out to be really great. Our first stop was the new library of Alexandria which is a massive, modern building with a huge collection of books. 8 million to be precise. We then went to a few different historical sites — the catacombs, the Roman amphitheatre (where they are still digging in hope of finding Alexander the Great’s tomb), the location of the old lighthouse of Alexandria, and then a trio of mosques. The day ended with a seafood lunch at a restaurant called the Fish Market, which was another really nice meal. Amy and Tegan were asked to have their photos taken on the pier and more times throughout the day. Steve had a kid pestering to buy a balloon. He was absolutely relentless. This was the only form of harassment we received.

The day really made us realise how poor our previous tour had been, and how much we were ripped off, but no one really minded too much — it was still a great day.

We then jumped in the car for the drive home and everyone fell asleep for a while. It was around 7pm when we got in, and the plan was to head to the markets, but after we called the airline to change our flight from 4:35am to 5:55pm the next day everyone was happy to hang out by the hotel pool and have a relaxed evening.

It’s been so nice to catch up with friends and explore a place like Cairo. It’s so different to what we both thought it would be like. Being in a big group means people don’t pester us too much, and it obviously helps a lot that Christina speaks Arabic. Cairo is hard to describe - there are so many tall, rundown buildings, some that are empty. The roads are insane with no rules and I assume no car insurance. There seems to be a car horn language with beeps meaning many different things. There are people everywhere!Read more