Day 5

Well, we have left Cairo behind us and I cannot say I am sorry - apart from all the ancient sites, the main memories would be:-

* the traffic and the noise, and how you quickly learn that there are only two types of pedestrians - the quick and the dead. Having said that, we are all now dab hands at crossing 3-4-5 lines of moving traffic, with hardly a care in the world

* the rubbish everywhere (and I do mean rubbish, not just litter). There are piles everywhere in the streets, and in the canals. The place is FILTHY and so much of the infrastructure looks - at best - downright shabby. Yes, there are certainly some very impressive buildings, but the overall effect is of a never ending panorama of grey/brown cement/concrete high rise apartment blocks. I am attaching a view from our hotel bedroom, plus looking down on the Syrian embassy - we were told that there were tanks in the street outside a short while ago.

* the height of the kerbstones (12"or perhaps even more). No wonder so
many people walk in the road

* the absolutely immaculate, spotless white uniforms of the tourism police that seem to be almost everywhere

Anyway, we set off with two (one decidedly overburdened) taxis to find Helena - our home for the next 100 days and more. Photo herewith of "her" at what passes for a motorway services area. In fact very comfortable, with well stocked library on board, 250 litres of drinking water etc. As usual, we had to fight our way out of Cairo - one of the bridges has ten lanes of traffic and still there seems to be congestion in every direction.

I have been delighted to discover that i am not the only one who is suffering today - everyone seems to have aching limbs and we are all attributing this to our exertions walking crouched backwards up and down inside pyramids.

The road to Alexandria is surely the best in Egypt - largely eight lanes with surely the best road surface in the entire country (no doubt the last that we shall see for quite some time). Best part was a huge advertising hoarding with Steven Gerrard's face saying "play the Liverpool way" (but perhaps not the way they are playing this season!).

We arrived in Alex just before sunset - our hotel is literally just of the Corniche - view from our hotel bedroom herewith, the memorial to the unknown warrior.

Apart from dumping our stuff in the rooms, we all went out to get the feel of the place - and what a vibrant place it is, with seemingly endless street markets selling just about everything you can think of, again and again and again. The one thing we could not find was somewhere to eat in all these back streets until we spotted one that gave us a fantastic sea food spread (all items chosen by us and grilled to order)