Friday – February 15 and Saturday – February 16, 2019
Our Vantage Tour group completed our 7-night cruise down the Nile on the tourist ship, The Mojito. Friday morning, we said our fond farewells to the crew and staff of the riverboat, took our last looks at the beautiful waterway, and drove to Luxor airport for our flight back to Cairo.
We had been two groups of about 40 adventurers with two Egyptian tour-guides traveling between Cairo and Aswan. Maged and Aladdin proved to be excellent knowledgeable leaders and we learned much about Egyptian culture and history and we enjoyed unforgettable travel experiences.
We flew from Luxor to Cairo and checked into the Renaissance Hotel for one night. Half the group was flying home Saturday while seventeen of us continued to Alexandria.
The most direct route between Cairo and Alexandria is a wide highway along the Nile River Valley which takes about three hours. Our plan was to stop at the historic site of El Alamein on the way to Alexandria so we took the longer road through the eastern Sahara Desert.
It was a boring 5-hour drive and definitely miss-able. The landscape reminded me of one of my previous trips driving through the Kyzylkum Desert between Bukhara and Khiva, Uzbekistan. After many hours of looking at sand, and occasionally camels, it was exciting to get a peek of the azure Mediterranean Sea:
El Alamein, which means “the two flags” in Arabic, is a small town located 66 miles west of Alexandria. It is the site of two important World War II battles. We made a stop at the German War Memorial which looks like a medieval sandstone fortress. Inside are the tombs of almost 4000 German servicemen.
The El Alamein Battlefield is a haunting desert landscape with somber memorials to commemorate servicemen from many countries who fought and died during the war. The Allied victory at El Alamein led to the German surrender in North Africa in May 1943.
Our next stop was the El Alamein Military Museum which was built in 1956. The museum presented a vivid portrayal of the battles in Egypt during World War II using dioramas, maps, images, and artifacts.
We finally arrived in the city of Alexandria in the late afternoon, had lunch, and checked into the Four Seasons Hotel.
The traffic in Alexandria is very heavy especially along the 22-mile corniche which runs along the Mediterranean.
The Four Seasons was a large complex of apartments, shopping center, restaurants, shops, and a relatively small hotel.
I explored the modern shopping center which was through a guarded door in the lobby:
Along with clothing and shoe stores, electronic shops, and cosmetic outlets, there was a food court with fast-food options, and a Whole-Foods-type organic market:
We had essentially been traveling for two days from Luxor to Cairo to Alexandria and it was nice to arrive on the Mediterranean Sea and have a relaxing evening. Our view from the hotel:
