Googling and Algiers

The internet is indeed wonderful. Having time on my hands, I was vaguely Googling various places for property to buy. Looked at Trinidad, but the websites are a bit pathetic and the properties none too cheap. Then Algiers, where if it was politically stable, would be my choice for a happy retirement.

Amazing how much property has been built in Algiers over the last thirty years despite civil unrest and war. There are several large hotels in the area, including one just outside town where we used to drive to a remote and empty beach called Sidi Ferruch - now a huge hotel complex. If I am not mistaken in my interpretation of property prices, there seem to be large villas for sale dotted around the capital for under £4,000. However my maths may be incorrect. Or again, the low prices may be due to the civil unrest and low local salaries.

When I lived there in the early sixties after the war with the French, and Ben Bella was in power, civil servants, including an Irish architect friend of ours, were sometimes only paid once or twice a year, meanwhile living on credit from landlords, facilities companies and local shops. I wonder if it is still like that? My husband graduated from Oxford and went there to teach English. I worked in various embassies.

It really is a beautiful city. We lived in Golfe, which was in the hills on the left looking inland from the sea. We looked out every night over the bay, lit up all around. There were several village-like suburbs, with old low-rise white Arab style houses, the roofs in certain seasons covered in stork's nests.

The seaside part of town was full of old colonial buildings and ornate gardens, these rather grand areas and squares next to the small bustling streets, with one larger, wider, smart shopping street. The most exciting part was the casbah, which wound from the lower part steeply up to the top with great views, tiny cobbled streets with donkeys transporting goods, and mysterious buildings with huge wooden doors.

At one point we lived in a marvellous apartment further into town, but still with magnificent views and a large terrace. This was owned by an architect, a pied-noir who returned to France. The apartment consisted of one huge room with a tiny kitchen and bathroom off, tiny windows in the huge walls, a fourposter bed against one wall, all leading off to the white terrace. There were two or three supporting pillars in the flat. The floor, walls, ceiling and pillars were all covered with absolutely fantastic tiles. When old buildings had been demolished, this guy collected all the ancient tiles and put them inside his flat. It was like the Arabian Nights. Photography never seemed so important in those days or I would have some snaps.