Library time

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Thursday July 13, 2006 - Joan, Roger, and I met up with Marisha and Aleksey at their hotel in the morning. Joan had checked out and decided to stay in Alexandria for a night or two before heading to Dahab and then south. I was going south first, and Roger decided to join me. We got a cab to the train station and bought tickets for the 9:10am train to Alexandria. Then Roger and I bought our tickets to Aswan for the following evening. The train to Alexandria was pleasant enough and took two hours to get there. When we arrived we bought our tickets back for the same night. The last train was sold out so we got tickets for 7:30pm. Next Joan had to look for a hotel and while he searched, we ate at McDonalds. Then we were off to see the sights. We went to the underground crypts and walked there for a bit, and then to the library. In ancient times, it was the biggest baddest library around. That is until Cleopatra and her warring half-brother/husband managed to burn it down. Now there is a new library that is beautifully designed and aspires to be another great library. We took a wonderful free tour of the library and then wandered about for a bit, inside and out. It is right on the Mediterranean Sea, so we walked along the sea back into town. Here we said good-bye to Joan and made our way towards the train station.

On the way there Aleksey and I were looking for some koshary. We ran into a guy who wanted to be friends with Aleksey, bought us koshary, and then bought a ticket on the train to Cairo. We had some weirdness where the tourist police were asking if he was our friend and we said no. They then made him leave us alone, which turned out to be weird. He took offense to this and we explained that we just told them we didn't know him before, not that he wasn't friendly. Super uncomfortable. There are tourist police everywhere in Egypt after they had some problems a few years back, and everything is strange because of it it seems.

Anyway, took the train back to Cairo without further incident and said good-night to the others.

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