Advertisement
Published: December 13th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Day 239
Heading to Alexandria we had high expectations of granduer and much historical relics, however we should have done more background research. Alexandria is a city that has been conqured many times and with the passing time much of it's relics have been destroyed or succumbed to the depths of the Mediteranian. Most of the city's hotels and cafe's are vintage in design dating back to the early 1900's when Alexandria was seen as a European city owned by the Egyptians. However, now much of the bars and cafes are closed, and the nightlife is restricted to shopping in the city centre. Hence, a little dissapointed but undeterred we set out to explore Alexandria.
We found the Roman ampitheatre, now mere old ruins from the Ptolemaic times previously known as Park of Pan a pleasure garden, now occuping a large residence of cats!
From here we made our way towards Pompeys Pillar, through the market we assuming for pets with baskets and cages of pigeons, cats, kittens, dogs and pups, rabbits, goats, sheep, fish, budgies even a hawk, after knocking back all offers, I'm not sure what they expected us to do with a pigeon whilst backpacking. We
continued along the dusty streetspast the blokes smoking shesha and kids in the streets until we found the mighty Pompey's pillar, not actually "Pompey's" pillar it's inscription states it was built to support a statue of emporer Diocletian. It claims to be the only standing pillar of the early Greaco roman history of Alexandria erected 291 AD. It stands at a whopping 28meters high and impressive sight built from a single shaft of granite.
Soon after we were off to the catacombs of Kom Ash- Shuqqafa, a truely amazing structure capable of accomodating upto 300 corpses whi ch was found accidently in 1900 when a donkey disappeared through the ground! We climbed deep within the belly of the tombs which can go upto 35 meters below the ground. Beneath the earth we found many painted engravings on the walls of the tombs proclaiming many offerings to the underworld Gods.
After a busy morning we sourced a local seafood restaurant hidden down an alley. With a few flash backs to Jez's food poisoining on Koh Samui we succumbed to the recommendation of the Lonely Planet and the encouragement of the Manager of the place to have a crack at the
seafood. We had an amazingly good and cheap feed of fried flake, prawns, calamari, mussles together with pita, salad, and of course hommus. For the sum of just 35 EP each.
After lunch the next stop was the new Alexandria Library built to replace the its previous library which was said to be the greatest collection of books in all antiquity. Hence its replacement library is a building for the future of Alexandria. It successfully leaves the past behind, by very interesting architecture replicating a second sun rising from the Mediaterranean. Here we wandered through the 'Impression of Alexandria' an exhibit of history of the city through a vast collection of maps, paintings and photographs giving some insight into the beautiful city it once was.
We wandered back along the sea amongst the local fisherman and locals busy with everyday life. After a rest at the motel when ventured out for tea, into streets of chao's, constant "beeping" from the road, crys of "taxi, taxi" and footpaths full of local men, women and children shopping.
Day 240
We checked out of our motel and grabbed a delicous breaky of pancakes at the pastry shop before heading to the
internet cafe to ring home and catch up on blogs.
With plenty of time to kill and no where specificallyy to go wandered the strangly quiet streets in direct contrast to the hussle and bustle of the night before stopping at Gad for couple felafals and sherwerma (kebabs) in the park.
We caught a cheap cab to the train station, with a lively taxi driver who give us our first arabic lesson (unfortunately little stuck!).
The train ride back to Cairo seemed relatively quick (a couple good books helped) and we arrived at the central station. Unfortunately our overnight sleeper train left from Giza station, despite the security officer being adament we couldn't travel on the metro with our backpacks we decided to wing it. And succeeded... other then a few concerned looks as Jez pretended to be oblivious he was on the women's only carriage.
With a couple hours to kill, we found a couple spare seats at the station restaurants. Pricey seats it turned out when we left we were charged twenty pounds for our two bottles of water and chocolate bar normally around three pound each.
We boarded the train to find our private cabin clean and
cosy, dinner and breaky appropriately bland aeroplane style and the trip a couple hours longer than expected.
We had a good time in Alexandria, However, unfortunately the Glories of Alexandria remain firmly in the past.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.126s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 14; qc: 61; dbt: 0.0752s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb