Arriving in Alexandria we were free to do whatever we wanted. On board the Atlas they had told us of a few things of interest to visit in Alexandria but nothing specific. Anne and I were unsure as to what we would do exactly, but we had decided to go with two friends, Anne and Geoff, that we had met on board and who would be with us during our week long tour of Egypt. Immediately after leaving the ship we were totally surrounded by people who were trying to get us to go with them, for a fee of course, to see various points of interest. I don't recall his name, but among the group appeared this rather stately looking gentleman (picture left) who offered to take a small group on a tour of several historic sites. We agreed to accompany him and waited while he found additional people from the ship to join the group. It didn't take to long for him to find the additional people and we were soon boarding a small van for our tour of Alexandria.

What we found immediately after leaving the dock area is not at all what we expected to find. Our expectations were that Alexandria would be a modern city much like the cities in Europe. Wrong! Egypt as a whole can only be considered a third-world country and we would soon learn exactly what that meant.

Alexandria, while it might be considered a modern city, still seemed caught in the past. Where there were automobiles there was an equal number of horse drawn carriages. Buildings were built on top of each other, as you might expect in a city, and laundry was hanging from almost all the balconies. The streets were filthy for the most part and many places seemed in disrepair. It certainly wasn't what we expected in Egypt.