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Published: August 23rd 2011
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In the morning we woke up and set our target on Alexandria. The plan was to take the train to Alexandria. Conveniently the train station in Cairo is on the metro line that our hotel was on, which made our transport to the Cairo train station easy.
Once we were at the train station, we bought some tickets for the train. A dude from the army took charge of our ticket buying... grr... 5 LE baksheesh again.... We got our tickets (second class air conditioned) and sat down for a short wait. We were able to find a small restaurant thingy where we were able to eat in peace and were able to scrounge some ridiculously overpriced chocolate croissants with one drop of chocolate each.
Our train arrived on time and we got on. The train cars are a bit rough around the edges with a bit of a funky odor to them, but functional. The toilets are Indian-style, as in a hole in the floor that you can see the tracks through. This is one situation where being a dude has a lots of benefits. I definitely would not have wanted to sit on the toilet, that's for
sure.
After a slightly delayed trip (we sat for an hour), our train arrived in Alexandria. The train goes through the Nile delta, and as a result the land around the train track is very verdant. There are fields of corn, rice, and many other things, most of which are very thirsty crops. In general Egypt is quite wet compared with Jordan.
We walked around in Alex with our packs, working our way to where we thought our hostel was. As you walk through downtown Alex, you are walking along the Corniche right along the Mediterranean. The weather is quite nice since you have the Mediterranean to moderate the temperature. We arrived in the afternoon, and went for a walk. At the end of the night we settled at Délices, a French-styled patisserie. I had an absolutely delicious and unhealthy Bavarian cake soaked in fruit syrup. Tad had a mousse.
We woke up the next day and planned to go to Abu Qir for dinner since we had heard a lot of good things about the fish on offer in Abu Qir and both of us are fans of fish. Before we left for Abu Qir we
walked around Alex. Our first stop was at the Alexandria Library which is a new construction and is planned to hold 8 million volumes when complete. Its is quite impressive. We had "breakfast" at Cinnabon, one of the only food places open sadly (delicious though). We then walked all the way along the Corniche to the Fortress, which was closed thanks to Ramadan, though we wandered around the outside of the Fortress a bit.
After the Fortress we caught a taxi to Abu Qir for dinner. Or rather, we caught a shared taxi to Abu Qir for dinner. We got there a bit before sundown so we walked along the beach a bit and found a place that was willing to serve drinks. As the sun was beginning to go down we found a place along the beach that did fish dinners and we were able to get fish dinners for 60 LE (around $10) that were really good. They were basically fish split down the middle with roast veggies and spices. Tasted a lot like an Indian mix of spices.
The next day we planned to go to the beach, but our bus to the beach took
an insanely long amount of time to get to the beach. At one point we were actually not moving at all. Eventually we got dropped off in a town and we walked out to the beach. While the beaches in Abu Qir had raw sewage flowing onto them, the beaches where we went were really nice. Tad and I went swimming for a while, and then went for a long walk along the beach. It was quite lovely. We walked back to where we picked up the service for the beach and took a service back to Alex. We had planned to eat at another fish place in Alex, but they were closed, so we ended up at a meh place where we had a simple dinner. And then back to Délices for a snack and the internet.
The next morning we left for Cairo.
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