On to Mumbai...(gulp)

Well in a few hours we'll be on our way to Mumbai trading in one city of 20 million plus souls for another of equal or bigger size. I keep wondering if Cairo has given us some kind of foretaste for Mumbai, given its size and chaotic nature, but I am sure it will be a completely different experience.

We spent Thursday night and most of Friday at the seaside city of Alexandria. It was a welcome break from Cairo, though its funny thinking of a city of 4.5 million as a break, but compared to Cairo it might as well have been a quaint English seaside village.

Alexandria was really cool with its palm trees, faded charm, elegant old hotels and long promenade running along the coast. As with most things Egyptian its ancient, dating back about 3000 years. It was founded by Alexander the Great in about 322BC and the last Roman ruler was Cleopatra. We visited some of the ancient ruins including the site of an ancient Roman temple, where this photo was taken. We also went down into the Roman-Greek catacombs which was really cool. Underground you find these empty coffins and a temple built into the rock protected by carved snakes and other mythological figures. It looked like something straight out of Indiana Jones. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take our cameras into the tombs.

So its goodbye Egypt. We would definitely love to come back, but I think we have both seen and experienced enough of Cairo, and would love to visit Luxor and Dahab on our next trip. It was nice to discover that Alexandria had none of the tourist menace that is so prevalent in Cairo.

What has been most surprising though about our overall Egyptian experience has been the incredibly backward state of the tourism industry here. Luckily for Egypt, it has so much to offer, you put up with it for the thrills you experience. Still, I can't help but wonder if they made more of an effort to jack up their tourism industry, a lot more people would visit!