Day 6

The great city of Alexandria, so the first stop had to be the old Arab fort on the site of the famous lighthouse - it was really great to walk around the length of the harbour to reach it. Not quite walking in the footprints of history, but not so far off. Probably much the same as any old fort from hundreds of years ago, but looked very imposing all the same in its shining white limestone. We found the ancient underground water cistern, and of course yours truly fell down the final step(s) in the near total darkness - fortunately more a question of hurt pride than hurt bones.

We then walked on for what seemed like miles to find the underground catacombs etc from the original city, only to find them definitely closed so it was back around the harbour to the new Library. Here we had a guided tour and were then left to our own devices. We were all incredibly impressed. The architecture is really magnificent, and although it currently holds "only" some 1 1/2 million books, it has the capacity for 8 million. Seemingly everything from Robert Harris's "the Fatal Shore" to Prince Charles autobiography already there - and the gift shop even sells such things "Dutch for dummies". It's printing machine can print a 500 page book (including the cover and binding) in less than five minutes. Bibalex.org for anyone who wants to learn more - I think it has the largest reading room in the world for some 2000 people, and quieter than St Albans library on a quiet day.

Perhaps the highlight for me was being able to get a temporary reader's pass and log in to read my own blog in the great library of Alexandria - sorry, but for a totally non techie like me, this was almost mind blowing, so Paul kindly took a shot of the great event (sideways on as I have yet to learn how to rotate etc)

Afternoon coffee and pastries were taken at the famous Cecil hotel (Somerset Maugham, Winston Churchill etc) before dinner at another very very non western "restaurant". We have all learnt a new word in Arabic - we thought that "foul" on their English language menu meant chicken, and as this was the only meat dish (we are all delighted that there are no vegetarians amongst us), we ordered six different ones to be shared communally. It turned out that "foul" means beans but the dishes were delicious any way, so no complaints, and good to be in a truly Egyptian restaurant again.

Tomorrow is a long drive to a desert oasis (but I think somewhat bigger than my childhood idea of a small pond with three date palms), so I think this will be the last message for a few days - probably not again until we get to Luxor.

Bryan