Alexandria

Friday we got up early and the Hotel arranged for us to have a driver to Alexandria. I stayed awake on the 3 hour car ride long enough to watch the pyramids as we passed them, and then I made the mistake of closing my eyes. I woke up when we stopped at a random gate and the driver told us to go in and that he would wait for us in a cafe. We had no idea what the place was we just walked up to the ticket counter and found out that we had to give them our cameras or not go in, so we gave them our cameras. The Canadians in front of us were being obnoxious and one of them collected all their cameras and waited outside for them to go in and come back. We were more trusting, and it turned out well. The place turned out to be catacombs from the time in Egyptian history when the Romans were in charge, so the tombs had hieroglyphics and Egyptian myths mixed with Roman myths. At one point we had to balance on beams of wood in order to go through some of the catacombs because there had been flooding. I felt like a real archaeologist, and then a school group came through and I didn't appreciate how closed the space got when they all came down. So we wandered back up to the daylight, got our cameras and found our driver.


He stopped in front of 2 other places that he said weren't worth paying to go in to see, so we just took pictures of a random column and an amphitheater. Then we got to the Mediterranean and it was gorgeous, although the wind was giving me trouble. The skirt was a bad choice. At this point we found out our driver's name was Timour and he dropped us off in front of the Citadel to walk around. It really was an inconvenience that he couldn't go in with us, because as 2 American girls alone we attracted a swarm of boys ranging in age from 8 to 17 and they would not leave us alone unless we stood by the tourism guards. So the Citadel was beautiful, but I couldn't really enjoy it because I had to make an effort not to make eye contact with any of our followers and at the same time pretend we didn't speak English.



We met Timour outside and walked along the little wharf and got sprayed with the sea water. He took us to a local seafood restaurant where this was placed in front of me:
But I ate it. Well, most of it, I couldn't stomach the shrimp with their little slimy eyes and crazy orange leg things. I kind of felt like I was betraying Nemo a little bit, but it was Friday in Lent so what else was I supposed to eat? Luckily it turned out to be delicious aside from the part where I had to lift up the fin...

Now that I've put that delightful picture in your mind, after lunch we drove to the Library! It is not of course the original one and the design was very modern and contemporary it didn't really fit into my image of Egyptian architecture.

Of course they had to have this dude in there:

(Alexander the Great)

We drove back to Cairo and I stayed awake longer just enjoying the desert and the random shopping mall and Africa Safari that we passed. I love Egypt.