Even though it was approaching the hottest part of the day, I went out for a recce.
The old town consists of a grid of narrow (1 car wide) streets in an area about 400x600m, surrounded by the old sea wall and fortifications. A lot of it is quaint, some dirty and smelly, all busy, most a bit dangerous to walk around, with holes in the narrow, uneven pavements (often necessitating walking on the road) and cars and motorcycles on the roads of course. No perceived personal safety issue during the day BUT in the plazas especially, the restaurant touts, hat sellers, other stuff sellers, taxi driver touts etc are really, really bad. Proper Egyptian strength annoying. You politely wave them off with No, gracias but they keep at you, following you, badgering, sometimes only stopping on the 4th no, each time said with increased emphasis.
In spite of care, I manged to trip and fall onto my front; amazed I only got a couple of small scratches and nothing of me, phone, camera etc was broken. Passers by were very helpful, making sure I was OK.
A range of pics of the streets of the old town
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May of the streets are pedestrianised at night, but the town would do well to pedestrianise some permanently, as done in many European towns.
