On the mediterranean

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We arrived at our hotel on July 26th street on July 26th. Apparently it's a national day, enough to warrant a street name, but I'm not sure what actually happened that day. In any case, the Egyptians didn't seem to celebrate anything on this day. 

Today we said goodbye to Amman and said a reluctant hello again to Egypt. Ww got off the plane in Alexandria and right away we could tell the difference. Things were much dirtier here than in Jordan. This time we tried to avoid the visa fiasco of last time and instead of waiting in line at customs, we tried to get the visa first so we didn't have to go back for it after. We were wrong again. We stood in front of the visa desk for at least 10 minutes without anyone there with the rest of the plane looking on at us. Finally two passengers told us that we'd be waiting there forever because no one was coming. These friendly passengers (we're pretty sure they're Jordanian and not Egyptian because they didn't ask for baksheesh and were helpful) told us to go to customs first then get the visa. When we got up to customs we did have to go and get a visa (outside of customs stupidly) and then get back in line (we were the last ones anyways). So we leave the airport and we try to grab a cab to go downtown and we're about o get in this guys cab when the two same passengers approached us and offered us their suggestions. They basically told us we were about to get ripped off so we were better off walking to the road and getting an official Alexandria cab from there- they have meters. The woman even offered to give us her cell phone number incase we had any troubles during our stay. We must have looked like the biggest suckers ever, buy it was really nice to meet such concerned people. Anyways we made it to our hotel (windsor palace hotel) which I located on alexandia's corniche (road right next to the water). Our room had a side view of the Mediterranean. This fancy hotel definitely is an older colonial landmark of Alexandria, and it had a very British palace feel to it. After we settled in we decided to go out and explore. We were very fearful of needing those dreaded yellow pills again so we did our best to avoid any sketchy eateries ( plus we've already experienced Egyptian food and it wasn't the best food we've eve had...). We walked approximately 5 kilometers along the corniche toward the citadel of Qaitbay, which still stands on what they believe is the site of the ancient Pharos lighthouse (one of the ancient wonders of the world). The lighthouse was built in 279 BC and apparently was in use in Alexandria until two earthquakes (one in 1100 and one in 1307) destroyed it. Apparently it is believed that some of the ancient lighthouses stones were used in the building of the citadel, and I also remember reading that some of the remains of the lighthouse are underwater (and they also believe this about much of ancient Alexandria). Anyways, the citadel was built in 1479 to protect Alexandria from sea attacks. Many battles had been fought here and the citadel itself was damaged many times and the walls were rebuilt, even in more recent times.  We were able to walk around the fort, go inside the keep and see the different floors soldiers lived on. Like many of the sites in Egypt, there was absolutely no information posted on what you are seeing, and we were actually quite unimpressed with the simplicity of the fort. That and the tourist police were out to ins some suckers to get tips from. They were trying to show foreigners the views outside the windows in the hopes they can coerce a tip out of their victims. We're too smart for that now!

 Anyways one thing about Alexandria which really surprised me is the lack of white (or any colour belonging to a foreigner) tourists. As we walked around the citadel we got a lot of attention from other tourists. They all seemed to be middle eastern. In fact we found very few tourists from beyond this part of the world during our stay here. It was weird because I always thought of Alexandria to be a very Mediterranean city, but Europeans were no where in sight. Inside the citadel people were definitely looking at us, but it didn't feel like in a bad way, more like out of fascination. We were even stopped by a group of young guys from egypt. They offered to take our picture with our camera, and we hesitantly allowed them to ( because it was such a beautiful view and they really couldn't escape with it easily) but what they had really wanted was for them to take a picture with us, on their camera. We thought it was odd but we obliged. Also, everywhere we went in the citadel people were saying hello to us, without wanting anything in return. This is a very welcome change compared to the other parts of egypt. I think they just don't see as many tourists here. Two little boys were driving their mom nuts because everytime they came into a room with me (elysia) in it, they took the opportunity to practice their few sentences of english with me (hello, what's your name, where from), even if I wasn't paying attention.  The making of a southern haggler. 

After the citadel we found ourselves some ice cream (hoping that you cant really go wrong with ice cream) and we walked along the water back to he hotel to freshen up. Alxandria is a cooler city by Egyptian standards (29-31 degrees) but it's a heck of a lot more humid, so in many ways it's more uncomfortable than in the desert. There are a few other things I want to say about Alexandria before I go on. These are my observations and not necessarily shared by mike. First off, ts a very dirty city. I'm talking extremely dirty. It's so hard to grasp because tr city is just so full of potential, but people take advantage of it. I have to admit, most of be cities in egypt are pretty dirty, with trash lining the streets and puddles of unknown liquids on the streets so as to make it a gross experience treading through in flip flops. I think the and from the nearby deserts make everything look dirty too. Alex has all of that as well, but when you walk along the water and look over the edge of the sidewalk onto the beach, you quickly see the filth Limoges the waters of the Mediterranean. So mug garbage that you couldn't believe washes up along these shores, and whats worse is that they're all swimming in it. I've always heard that during the summer months many egyptians flock to the alex beaches. I haven't seen that many people yet, but in comparison to the beaches around our north American cities, there is a lot of people swimming in this disgusting harbour. Along the edge of the water is thousands of empty pop bottles, food containers etc that was up on the rocks or beach. You can even see tons of garbage floating in the water, with snorkelers right next to it. Anyways, I wouldn't swim in that water for a million bucks but they don't seem to care. I would love to organize a group to send here just to pick up trash and clean up this beautiful city. 

The second thing is the crazy traffic. I think everyone here learns to drive in racecar driving school. They're nuts! They thread the needle through traffic, drive super fast through very busy areas, drive in the middle of the road, and no seatbelts for the passengers! All these crazy moves that they do while driving you can imagine makes it very difficult to cross the street. Well in order to get to the corniche, which is the most beautiful stroll along the entire harbour, you have to cross the street (the 26th of July ave). This street is equivalent to a four lane divided highway, including no stop lights or (or signals to slow down of any kind) and no pedestrian over passes to get to the water. So you have to cross the crazy street. We're actually surprised that we never saw any accidents of any kind during our stay here and there were tons of people crossing the street to walk along the water. We had to suck it up and do it, but it was a very scary experience with what we feel to be very close calls (to them it's everyday life). Even mothers with little babies were doing it!

Anyways back to our day. In the afternoon we went out to see the few other remnants of ancient Alexandria ( there's not much left today). First we took a cab (again scary for the reasons mentioned above ) to Pompeys pillar. 

Pompey's pillar is apparently the most famous icon of Alexandria. It's 27m high and 9m thick column of red Aswan granite topped by a Corinthian capital. It sits on top of the ruins of the Serapis temple, where you can still see it's lower levels of the temple. The origin of the pillar is still unknown but it is thought have been erected in 300AD to honour Diocleian and may have supported just statue. For hundreds of years boats were able to follow the pillar from the water into the harbor. It was a pretty neat site to see and it had many of the same types of ruins (i.e. Sphinxes and hieroglyphs ) as we found further south.

 From there we walked to the Catacombs of Kom el-shoquafa though a really interesting neighborhood. It was only a few blocks to the catacombs but it really changed my impression of Alexandria and even of Egypt. From our travels through the south I felt like every Egyptian was out to get you; that no one was friendly and interested in helping you without a price. This changes it all. We walked through a nice village like area in the middle of the city. It definitely seemed like a poorer area but as we tried to make our way though, many were eager to point us in the right direction. Again, we felt like people there hadn't seen many white people before and everyone wanted to get in on the action of talking to them so we received many hellos as we walked through. Kids continually ran up to us and asked in their best english what our names are, where are we from and just to sat hello and walk with us. After a bit they would just run away. It was a very friendly place and the people had no ulterior motives. Definitely the nicest people in Egypt (at least that we encountered) live in this area, and this sentiment extended for the city as a whole. Although this community is very close to these 2 tourist attractions, 1) we've really noticed that there are no white tourists out doing these sites on their own so we were rare anyways and 2) most of the tourists are transported around in buses and don't even take the time to get to know their culture and walk around, so they appreciated this. 

The catcombs were second century private tombs that were later extended to serve the entire community. On this excavation site, they found over 300 bodies and if you go in the tombs you would be amazed at how large and extensive the area is. Room after room with row on row of these tombs were found underground. It was a large labarynthe of tombs and it was so creepy inside. Some of the rooms had rising water so it was so icky to be inside there. We were glad we weren't the only obese in there (especially since it was close to closing time) and even mike wanted to get out of there. We almost didn't see the path leading to the underground tomb area, as it was kind of hiding and when we were in the complex we were at first disappointed on how little there was to see, then we found the path. When we were outside we were approached by a man carrying a baby. We were super wary and waited for him to get to what he was selling. All he wanted was a picture of his baby with mike and then another picture of the baby with me. Such an odd proposition and we're definitely not used to such attention. 

We decided to walk back to the hotel through the streets o Alexandria ( because of our last friendly encounter with the locals). It was a long walk (6 k or so), and we walked through the same community nad got more hellos and even walked through market areas and no one even  hassled us, but many said their hellos (usually all men). We even bought some desert from a bakery on the way home. It definitely was a busy little city with lots of shop stalls and not many clean looking (to our standards, and we didnt want to get sick again) cafe or restaurants for us to stop at. 

We ended up having dinner that night at out hotel, which wasn't so bad because it was on the roof of the building and had a beautiful view overlooking the sea and the city around. There we watched the sun set over the hazy sky and listened to the constant beeping of the horns of the cars along the corniche. The food wasn't the best but it was a nice atmosphere. They even charged us a cover charge for the 2 buns we took from the bread basket the brought us. Those sneaky scoundrels...

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