My Travel Adventures

We had rented our car for two days, and on the second day of our driving around the island, we returned to Mdina. The city of Mdina was the capital of Malta from its founding by the Phoenicians around the eight century BCE until the Middle Ages. Its name was originally Maleth – also the name applied to the whole island. Mdina is famous for its massive walls, which accentuate the city’s stark elevation above the countryside and protect its dramatic spires. It has a cathedral dedicated to Saint Paul, who was shipwrecked on Malta and was supposed to have met the Roman governor Publius on the site of the future cathedral.

Today I went on a day trip to Alexandria, which I reserved online a few days ago. I was picked up at seven in the morning at my hotel in Cairo and returned almost exactly twelve hours later at the same. Despite sending a message to the tour agency to alert them that there were several hotels with the same name and despite showing them my hotel on a map, the driver still arrived at the wrong one. He was a competent man, so I assume my message was simply never passed on to him. He also had a quite eclectic taste in music: we started the day with some instrumental Egyptian pieces and then transitioned to Armenian pop.