Northern Africa

Articles from this Category

Freezing in Fes

Getting to Fes After breakfast I took a petit taxi to Casa Voyageurs station and bought a ticket to Fes (or Fez).  I shared a train compartment for around 4h30 with a nice family who spoke standard Arabic.  I appreciated the chats with them because people on the streets here don’t understand me.  Arriving, I took […]

Read more

Exploring the White House

King Hassan II Mosque This morning I started my exploration of “The White House” (Casablanca, Al Dar Al Beydha) with a visit to King Hassan II mosque. This impressive building is the third largest mosque in the world after the ones in Makkah and Madinah (formerly Mecca and Medina).  It accommodates 2,500 worshippers and the […]

Read more

Greetings from the White House

Above:  View from my room, of the port. Leaving Dubai Today I fly from Dubai to Casablanca at 0750.  It was an early start from the hotel.  Despite having checked-in online last night, processing at the airport was slow even with just the bag-drop counter. I had access to the lounge here at Dubai so […]

Read more

Egyptian Museum & Coptic Cairo

Egyptian Museum We took breakfast at the hotel’s Ibis Café courtesy of Pat and Fiona.  We had a fantastic early-bird room rate which excluded breakfast and didn’t see the need to pay for a breakfast buffet.  The selection was excellent but not quite as good as that at the Concorde in Sharm. We walked to […]

Read more

The Giza Pyramids

Pyramids Pat and Fiona had a buffet breakfast included in their much-higher hotel room rate while we ate lightly in our room.   That allowed us to have a sleep-in till about 0800. We left about 0900 for the Pyramids at Giza on the western edge of Cairo city.  We found the official entrance (as opposed […]

Read more

City of a Thousand Minarets

Above:  Concorde El Salam resort in Sharm. Enjoying the resort I wanted to make the most of the resort before we move on to Cairo.  I was in the water at 0715 but a leaky goggle cut my swim short. After a big buffet breakfast, we packed and returned to the outdoors to enjoy the […]

Read more

Better than Fiji

We two nights stay at the awesome Concorde El Salam resort, which meant a full day of just enjoying the sea, marine life, pools and good food. It became apparent that our resort (and Sharm) was popular with Russian sun-seekers, which explain the two large Russian jets at the airport.  G-strings seem more common here […]

Read more

Holiday time!

Above:  Scenery en route. Driving down to Sharm el Sheikh We returned to the hotel to collect our stuff and get ready for our drive south.  While we were destined for Sharm el Sheikh, we found a taxi to Dahab where we would change to a bus for Sharm. As we approached Dahab, we asked […]

Read more

St Katherine’s Monastery

Today, we have the morning to explore St Katherine’s before moving on to Sharm el Sheikh.  After breakfast, around 0915 we took a taxi from our accommodation to the monastery slightly out of town.   Lucky for us, with our elderly, that we were in a taxi as we could go all the way to […]

Read more

Ferry to Nuweiba and onwards to St Katherine

Ferry from Aqaba to Nuweiba At around 0900, after breakfast, we made our way to the ferry terminal at Aqaba for the trip to Nuweiba.  The taxi wasn’t allowed to go into the terminal area and it was a little bit of a hassle with luggage for the oldies. We let Pat and Fiona settle […]

Read more
Go top