Merry christmas y’all!

Am now in Alexandria (’alex’ to you and me) which I find remarkably like Ajaccio. There are, of course, many arabic looking people around but then there are in Ajaccio too; the sea front is quite similar - it’s the same sea after all; there are palm trees; there are cars triple parked everywhere; even the road and pavements are covered in a similar colour dirt… We visited the catacombs yesterday which was very cool. When we arrived we were told the lights were out because it was raining. But we were also told that if we bought some candles we would be allowed down. We duly bought our candles and matches only to find that it had stopped raining and the lights were back on. We lit a few candles anyway and explored some dark corners because it seemed like the right thing to do.

I’m meeting Salwa, Lydia’s host lady, tomorrow which I think Lydia is quite aprehensive about. I think I’m expected to make a good impression. As luck would have it I have one remaining item of clean clothing that I can wear.

Speaking of which we passed a very amusing half-hour this evening looking for a laundrette. The hotel told us there was one on our street which there obviously was not: there are only two shops on that street both of which are clearly not laundrettes. So we asked someone (it’s great having an arabic speaker with me) who wrote down the name of some place which was ‘just up the street’. So we walked up the street a bit and asked someone else who told us it was ‘just up the street and left’. The next person said it was ‘up the street and left then right’… and so on until we eventually found the place. Except it turned out to be a fabric shop.

Hmmm.

So Lyd asked where we could find a laundrette and that’s when the fun started. At the height of it we had 9 people all talking to each other and over each other (in Arabic) trying to decide where this particular laundrette was. Eventually we were drawn a map and a small essay and sent on our way. Fortunately the map was good so we didn’t need to use the essay.

When we found the place they wanted to charge us EGP1 per item of underwear and EGP4 per T-shirt. We had about one small washing machine load so it came to just under EGP60 which is about GBP5 - more than twice what I would expect to pay in Britain!

We decided to wash the clothes ourselves.

In other news we saw the pyramids which was very cool though unfortunately we turned up a little late and only had 40 minutes to marvel until we were chased out by the camel police.

One more thing I feel the need to mention. We decided to walk from the river to the citadel in Cairo. The map showed an old aquaduct which would take us there if we followed it except of course we followed it in the wrong direction and ended up miles away from our destination. We (lydia) asked a passerby who told us to take a bus which, as luck would have it, he was also taking. He flagged it down, got us on, paid our fare and told us where to get off all with a smile and no expectation of reward whatsoever!

Well, that’s all for now. Save me some turkey…