Searching for the Lighthouse of Alexandria

It’s been a month now since my book INSPIRED TO TRAVEL; TRAVEL TO INSPIRE – A TRAVEL MEMOIR was published and made available online via Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. I am pleased with the current interest especially to hear comments and suggestions from those who got their copies and have already read the book. One of my friends was so pleased that I had included Egypt as she is interested to visit the country and is considering traveling probably by the end of this summer. Like most of the questions that I have been asked so far, she wanted to know what made me decide to travel to Egypt in the first place.

Even before I went to Egypt, I had heard and already learnt from other travelers that it is best to visit there when in a group. I was fortunate that on my visit I was with two of my closest friends Cashmira and Walli. On reflection I can say that I agree with the advice for security reasons especially for a lady solo traveller.

As I mentioned to my friend during our meeting there wasn’t enough space in my book to mention all the movies that I have seen and books that I have read so I would like to share  here some that I think can be of interest to others, in addition to various blogs and documentaries available online depicting Egypt:

• The Prince of Egypt
• The Mummy
• The Ten Commandments
• Cleopatra
• Antony and Cleopatra
• The Pyramid
• Joseph :King of Dreams
• Cairo Time
• The English Patient
• The Jewel of the Nile
• The Scorpion King
• The Bible
• My Book of Bible Stories
• The Alchemist
• Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Street

Considering its thousands of years of existence and influence, Egypt has produced many remarkable individuals who leave their indelible marks all throughout history. And for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, here are some of my favourite Egyptians so far:

• Naguib Mahfouz (novelist)—he’s the author of THE CAIRO TRILOGY (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street). Mahfouz is the first Arab writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. To me, The Cairo Trilogy is an evocative novel that I wouldn’t have thought at first had been written by an Arab. The story is so riveting that when I started reading the first book, all I wanted was to immediately finish the other two to feed my curiosity.
• Omar Sharif (actor)—he is best known for his appearances in both English and American productions in the 1900s. Some of his films included Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and Funny Girl alongside Barbara Streisand.
• Mohamed Salah (footballer)—I know that Mo Salah is made famous in the world of football years after I travelled to Egypt, but I couldn’t help to mention him as he is one of my favourite footballers. He is one of the famous Egyptians nowadays that he’s even amiably called the Egyptian King by Liverpool Football Club supporters and The Pharaoh by the press and his fans.

Egypt is a massive country therefore planning is necessary where to start your exploration. And it is not only about pyramids, mummies, the Lighthouse and Library of Alexandria, etc… There’s more to it that will surely satisfy your curiosity.

To see more details about our visit to Egypt, please check my previous blog below:

My fascination about Ancient Egypt