Travels > Egypt
I rolled into Egypt with Joe Blythe and Susanne Jonsson from a week or two in Israel where we had chilled and stressed simultaneously. Israel had been cramped in many ways, the country is small, some 200 miles from top to tip and at its widest a mere 70 miles across. For such a small country it had ( and still does ) just too much going on. It is the spiritual home of 3 or 4 religions, it is the homeland of nearly 100 million Jews worldwide and 10000 Palestinians, it has history of wars, pestilence and divine intervention, yet it has no real modern culture of its own, So, stepping out of this bastard state, Joe, Susanne and I grinned big and wide as our minibus made its way along the north coast of the Sinai peninsula, we had breaking foam at he Mediterranean south easternmost point to our right and the desert to our left, and ahead we could smell history, vast tracts of it, layers upon layers of mouldering history.
Hours later and we are at the bus station, walking through metropolitan streets, much like those of Athens, but with slightly more of the orient and ever so slightly less of the Apollonian to them, We arrived at our hotel in Talaat Harbb street, near the centre of town and bedded down in a 5 bed dorm room.