Everybody should visit once. Nobody should have to visit twice. OK, I’ll elaborate a little. I really enjoyed my three weeks in Egypt and not just because I was spending it with Lydia. All the Ancient Egypt stuff is absolutely fascinating. The culture was also very interesting especially as it’s the first Arabic country I have visited since Morrocco (and I was only 5 then). The weather was pleasantly warm. The Red Sea is AMAZING (as you may have gathered from one of my previous entries!). The food is good if a little limited in variety.

But… It’s soooooooo dry!

Cairo is dusty, polluted, noisy and dry. Alexandria is much nicer but still very dry. Everywhere we visited was dry. Even the Nile Delta is dry and dusty in between the ridiculously lush, green bits. Then there’s the hassle. As a westerner it is IMPOSSIBLE to blend in anywhere (with the possible exception of predominantly bedouin areas such as central Sinai (which we visited) and the Western Desert (which we didn’t)). Everywhere you go you have Egyptians shouting, whistling and making kissing noises like people do to cats at/to you. The phrase I heard most (around 50 times a day) was “Welcome to Egypt” closely followed by “Welcome to Cairo”, “Welcome to Alexandria” and “Welcome to…” wherever we happened to be.

Now, if you haven’t been there you might think this is touching and a sign of their great hospitality. In some senses you’d be right. I estimate that only around 1/4 to 3/4 of people who ‘welcome’ you are actually trying to sell you something - depending on where you are. The rest are genuinely being friendly and hospitable (and, since westerner friends are highly prized, attempting to thereby raise their social statii). But imagine walking down a street in London and having someone walk up to you and stand in your way and say “Welcome to England” every 15-20 seconds. It would quickly get very annoying would it not? Especially if you’ve already been there for 5 months as Lydia has.

One Egyptian Lydia spoke to said that he really liked London because it was the only place outside of Egypt where he found he could blend in and not be stared at as an oddity. But then he was educated and fairly well travelled so is not very representative.

All in all I didn’t see anything that would make me even consider ever living there (one of Lydia’s egyptian friends was hard selling me her country as the best place for software engineers to work!). There are two places which I would consider returning to visit: Sinai (the eastern mountain/desert bit - essentially just to take photos of the amazing scenery) and Siwa (which we didn’t visit but is meant to be lovely and relaxed - it’s an oasis in the Wesern Desert and is mainly populated by Bedouins so is more relaxed).

But there are sooooooo many places higher on my list of places to visit that I doubt I ever will return.

Anyway, if you’ve never been there, go there; if you have then you can make up your own mind!