Between Crete and Port Said Friday 23rd

Willem Ruys

My dearest 3 (or say 10!!)

Nothing startling has happened, such CALM COOL weather. The view of rocky lovely Crete was too gorgeous,  rather like Aden in the XXX. S. coast very (apparently) uninhabited - a few tiny white villages strung out along the sea level line with zig zag roads. Brown and v. little vegetation.

Meals just as wonderful, scallops today, huge menu, like Paris. There is one huge French (Belgian) girl (?) here. Fair & fat, vivatious, D is the only person who can talk to her. We spoke to her today & she is too pleased as she is the only Frenchy on board & cannot speak anything but French.

Tomorrow we bus to Cairo, so I’ll keep this open.

Sunday 7.30 p.m. Back after a great adventure but too tiring for words, We got in a motor launch and went a mile up the Nile and got into a very hot bus. Then off through Port Said and on to the desert road to Cairo. I have taken a few snaps but am not expecting anything because the film only takes at 4 instead of 4-4. Soon know, I’ll take it to the shop at XXX. The bus was so HOT waiting for us, we nearly caught fire! Then went for 3 hours over a desert road. Describe when I see you. We got to Cairo about 6 & had dinner in a very queer hotel. Too long today really. The rooms were 20 feet high, the rooms vast the floors mosaic (or imitation), all pale green paint and very high dim lights (all rather nightmarish) We listened to horrible Egyptian TV thing out of order and then went to dinner in the same sort of dreary light. There were waiters, all in nightys, with large, soft bedroom slippers, sort of oozing round the room. Little tables, horrid green lentil soup (got it down)’ Dirty looking fresh water fish. Watery pork and XXX dreadful cakes, plonked on our plates with tongs. They didn’t understand English and skated round silently - wore fezes. It must have been an unusual hotel for the English. Such black, heavy men. The beds were dry & clean, but poverty stricken blankets, hard mattresses, bullety pillows. Bidet bath and showers (H & C but no hot).

We had to get up at 6 a.m. & breakfast 6.30 a.m. start in bus 7 a.m. I couldn't sleep much, thinking they wouldn’t call us (but they did!). Dogs barking, traffic hooting, chickens crowing. The bus outside was so hot I could not sit in it, had to wait till it started. It was quite alright once it started. 3½ hours solid driving through the desert - most interesting, first a torrid track, plenty of traffic. Through Ismailia, a poverty stricken large village all so shabby (not our fault, now anyhow!) In the goot spots maize, monkey nuts, huge tamarisk trees here and there. Cairo so much bigger than I thought (4,000,000?) a vast place, mosques and skyscrapers, tearing traffic, all hooting madly. 

Oh dear!, too much to say in a letter, will write it up. We are so stupid, keep forgetting we have a camera now! Just missed a helicopter flying round the ship now! It came down to 6 feet above the water & pushed the water down a bit by the pressure of the exhausts.

We saw the Tu Tankhamun things! He was a good looker & so was she. Lovely alabaster small carvings of them, such a crowd milling around. We were cheated and lied to right and left. Our XXX man collected tips after XXX showing! Went to Gizeh for sphinx, ruined temple, all beautiful warm, yellow stone, mobs everywhere! Very hard not to lose D, who keeps quietly disappearing, most worrying to me where no-one can speak English & there are other parties one could easily tack on to. We were taken to one pyramid where they gave camel rides (of 100 yds?) to those who wanted it (not I). All very peaceful there, camels with lovely soft-colours, bright rugs over them. The camels all say “bother” (or its camel equivalent) every time they get up or down & they look very annoyed too.

On to a marvellous museum and we saw all the things we read about in Leonard Cottrell’s book, it was all discovered about 1920 (?). I had bought the book for D then & read it to him of a night for 10 minutes or so when we were just married.

Lunch at Hilton’s Hotel, really a hotel - everything marvellous. On to Suez, one of the buses broke down in the middle of the desert & the exhaust (whole thing) came off! They went on without it. Terrible overcrowded tender to the Willem Ruys & some fools started rocking it. D said it was a big wash but I saw the wretches doing it and how it seemed to get higher and higher and do itself in the end. So thankful to get back on the W.R. The WCs were so filthy in Cairo, so nice to get back to cleanliness. No more coach trips for me if I can possibly not. So calm, still we do between 450 & 500 a day roughly. Inside the boat is coldish but we are muggy on the deck.

Love, dears

Mummy X