Day 110 to 112 - 17th to 19th February

Point of departure: Cairo

Point of arrival : Alexandria

Accommodation: Mercure Romance Hotel, Alexandria (www.accorhotels.com)

Km travelled today: 255 kmCum: 18 633km (gravel 0kmcum 4 649km)

Countries so far: 9/16

Where to next? El Alamein & Mersa Matruh

No of photos: 139 (cum 5 121)

Happily, our possessions from Novotel in Sharm el Sheikh arrived as promised and we were able to depart Cairo at about 12h15.

We got easily onto the ring road and drove towards the pyramids (almost invisible behind a shroud of mist/fog which would have rendered our celebratory photos impossible had we had similar conditions). Then on to the "desert road" for Alexandria and a pretty straightforward drive through to the Mediterranean city.

Finding the hotel was pretty straight forward although the Alexandria traffic is not much different from Cairo.Aggressive, unpredictable, chaotic!

Alexandria - the "pearl of the Mediterranean) and Egypt's second largest city with over 3 million population (compared to Cairo's 22 million). Founded by Alexander the Great in 331BC who then proceeded to order the construction of a new capital for his newly conquered country - there was just a small fishing village here called Racotis. Dying in 323BC Alexander never got to see the new city and Ptolemy I was the first King to live and rule from Alexandria and Ptolemy II turned Alexandria into the most important city in the Mediterranean and it remained so until the last monarch in this dynasty, Queen Cleopatra VII (up until now, we were unaware that there were 7 of them). Alexandria was also the city for the stormy relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony. But over time ancient Alexandria declined and when Napoleon Bonaparte landed he found only a sparsely populated fishing village. Then from the 19th century Alexandria became the focus for Egypt's commercial and maritime expansion with generations of Greek and Italian immigrants settling here.

Day 111 - we had thought we would hire a guide and car to see a few of Alexandria sights but we started too late and the agency the hotel recommended could not help. Consequently, we did our own thing… a taxi through to the Qaitbay Citadel (fort). Originally built by Sultan Qaitbay in 2nd century (rebuilt in 1982) to protect the city from attacks from the Crusaders and built on the site and with stones from the Pharos Lighthouse (one of the Seven Wonders of the World) destroyed by the 14th century earthquake.This famous lighthouse (built in 279BC) stood 120m high and supported a large mirror that could reflect the light off its beacon up to a distance of 150km across the sea.

We then hired a horse drawn carriage to ferry us to a couple of the other historic attractions, and after a bit of bargaining, we basically spent the afternoon with this leisurely means of transport, seeing the sights and experiencing some of the sounds and smells of Alexandria. Very relaxed and more intimate than being in a motor vehicle.

The stunning and exquisite Abu El-Abbas Mosque with its beautiful minaret and intricate turrets and its orange windows casting an eerie light on the interior. Unfortunately no photography was allowed inside the Mosque. This was another "shoes off" experience, with John entering through the front and Marina being directed to a side entrance for women… further comment may be damaging to John's health.

Pompey's Pillar - a prominent antiquity, is a 27m high and 9m wide column of Aswan granite topped with a Corinthian capital and flanked by two Ptolemaic granite sphinxes (one on each side). It's surrounded by the ruins of the temple of Serapis.

Then there is the Corniche (where our hotel is), and according to some travel guides, the most beautiful in all of Egypt… yes if you are facing the sea. Built in the early 1900's from a strip of land reclaimed from the sea it is dotted with hotels and apartment blocks but many of the buildings run down at best, disintegrating and derelict at worst.Blots on what would otherwise be a truly spectacular drive. By now with numb rear ends (after three hours in the not so comfortable seat) we headed back along the Corniche, in peak traffic, to our hotel.

Day 112 today was scuba diving in Alexandria, although Marina, still not feeling well, opted out. The dive concession, "Alexandria Dive Centre", was pretty run down and inauspicious, looking old, un-kept, faded and jaded. The fact that John lost his cell phone before the diving even started did not help (assume stolen)… there were a couple of stray people there, but there may be a miracle and it will turn up. Once the diving started there were two sites. The first was Pharaos Island with thousands of archaeological pieces including sphinxes, parts of the Alexandria Lighthouse (mentioned above), a base of an obelisk, statues, and columns from a number of different eras - Pharaohs, Greek and Roman.Visibility was fair and the dive was quite interesting. The second dive, inside the harbour, was on the site which was allegedly the summer palace of Marc Anthony, with a number of limestone columns, a complete sphinx and pots and containers from the ancient era. In addition, there is a World War II plane that crash landed, fairly intact, during 1941. However, the visibility in the harbour was very murky and it would all have been much more interesting if it were possible to get a perspective from further than about 2,5 metres. It was barely possible to see from one side of the plane's cockpit to the other! All in all, the morning can be written off to experience but we would neither recommend a visit to Alexandria for diving nor will we repeat it.

Marina in the meantime caught up with travel administration, as well as some domestic administration with provisional tax returns and emails, not to mention trying to sort out John's phone!

With the Beast parked in the sun and "adorned" with drying diving gear there is still a bit of sorting out to be done before we hit the road to El Alamein and Mersa Matruh tomorrow.