The train ride to Alexandria was a long one. Our route took us back through Cairo, and then north to the Mediterranean Sea. We arrived in Cairo at about 9am, and then the train continued for several more hours until we reached Alexandria. Unfortunately, Loren was very sick again from food poisoning, as she had been on each train ride so far. This time it was worse, and she was exhausted by the time we reached Alexandria.
When we arrived at the hotel, Loren was given a room straight away, and everyone else went out on a tour of Alexandria. The hotel was really nice and very colonial in style, with huge rooms and staircases. We had a huge airy room with an incredible view over the Mediterranean Sea and the coast of Alexandria. The sea breeze kept the room nice and cool, and the beach looked so beautiful from above.
Artur and the rest of the tour group took taxis to the catacombs. Artur ended up in a taxi with a crazy driver who hit a child crossing the road and laughed about it. The kid didn't see him coming, and was a bit stunned when he was hit. The driver didn't even stop. He also tried to get rid of them early, not at the right destination. Great driver!
There were no pictures allowed in the catacombs unfortunately, so Loren didn't get to see this part of the tour either. The big catacombs stored above 300 people. It looks from above like a well, but you can walk down and around this well via a staircase.
Little compartments at the sides of the walls were used to store the dead bodies. The bodies were abseiled down the side of the walls with a rope. Artur thought it looked like and ancient version of the Japanese capsule hotel. The catacombs were only discovered by accident, when a donkey fell down the hole.
Seafood by the Sea
At lunchtime, everyone went to a fancy seafood restaurant by the beach. Artur came back to the hotel instead to check up on Loren. She had just woken up, and the food poisoning medication had done its trick, and she was feeling much better. She decided to join everyone at the restaurant.
The restaurant was pretty fancy, and it was one of those places where they serve you things before you even order them. When we arrived, they opened a 1.5 L bottle of water and gave it to us, along with 8 plates of various salads. We told them we'd prefer to see the menu first before having our drinks decided for us, and we'd rather not pay for salads that we are not going to eat. We were avoiding anything uncooked in Egypt, especially salads washed in their dirty water.
Finally they stopped pulling money scamming tricks on us, and just let us read the menus and choose our food. We ended up having a fantastic meal of freshly grilled fish. It was pretty good value for seafood compared to Europe.
Alexandria Library and Stroll by the Sea
That evening, we took a tram to the Alexandria Library. The trams were pretty cool, with really tall seats. They made everyone look like children. As usual the attention from the Egyptian males to our mostly female group was conspicuous. There were several spare rows of seats available, but one guy picked the only remaining seat amongst a group of our girls. Then he proceeded to eye each of them up. Not half obvious!
The Library was very modern looking in terms of architecture. The first part that we saw was a huge wall covered in symbols. Some were hieroglyphs, greek symbols etc. Beneath the symbols was a pond with fountains. This part seemed fairly conservative, but when we came around to the front of the Library we were surprised. There was a big spherical dome covered in Neon lights, and the other sloped pyramid like surface of the library was also covered in lights. There was another big fountain in front of this side as well. Very modern, not what we expected at all.
After seeing the library, we went for a walk along the Esplanade by the water. To do this, we had to cross several heavy lanes of traffic. Traffic does not move slowly here, or give way to pedestrians, so it was pretty scary. We all made it across safely though.
At the other side, there was a sidewalk that followed the water. It was beautiful to see all the lights of the city as they curved along the coast. We soon noticed that the water was not as beautiful as we had imagined. The shoreline looked like a rubbish dump. There were piles of trash covering the rocks and the sand by the water, and lots more floating in the water. We were very glad we didn't go swimming that day. It's amazing how ugly a country can make the Mediterraean Sea by not looking after it.
Artur decided to walk along the stone wall by the pathway, like a little school boy. He looked like on too with his little backpack, and his thumbs tucked behind the straps. Soon we arrived back in town again, and we were all feeling pretty hungry. We couldn't find any nice restaurants, so we decided to just get take away. We were about to get Egyptian take away kebab rolls, but after everyone's struggle with food posioning, we decided to get McDonalds take away instead.
We thought we were going to meet up and eat together, but Wahid was too lazy to wait for us, so we went to eat by the water. As we sat by the water, and looked down at the rubbish, we realised that most people proabably throw their rubbish down there after they eat. Not nice.
We were leaving for our trip to the desert the next day, so we stocked up on some snacks and wandered back to our beautiful hotel.
To see the photos from the post in slideshow mode, click on on the link below:
Alexandria pictures
No comments:
Post a Comment