Day 2- Alexandria

Dec 10, 2005

The next day we got all bundled up (Cairo was suprisingly chilly) and got into our van for a day trip to the seaside city of Alexandria, or as Noha call it, Alex :). We saw Cairo waking up in the morning and the impression that I got was brown, dusty and full of people going about their businesses. There were peddlers selling bread and stuff from their carts but the van was moving so fast that I couldn't take a picture of them. Being inside the van, I pretty much felt cut off from the real world and all the happenings out there, and it was a feeling that pretty much stayed with me throughout the trip.

The drive to Alexandria took 3 hours and the scenery along the way was none too spectacular. We stopped by at a rest house for a pee break and thought of getting some snacks, but everything was SO expensive. A bar of Snickers cost around RM4 or more! I'm not sure whether this is because it was a resthouse visited by a lot of tourists (and trust me there were A LOT of them there), but the coming few days I still found myself shocked at the price of the snacks and titbits. Thankfully my chocolate cravings were satisfied by some Hershey's Kisses and a big bar of Milka Chocolates which me and Woonie had the good sense to purchase when we transitted at Doha, and there was enough to last us the whole time in Egypt :). It was also at the resthouse that we first encountered the huge Egyptian schoolkids tours:P. Turns out that it is a common thing for schools to organize these "lawatan sambil belajar" to all the historical places In Egypt and we met several during our whole journey (which turned out to be quite amusing experiences, read later entrieis to find out more). And when I say huge, I mean HUGE...it was like all these bunch of teens and kids running around in colourful clothes, school boys looking at you (the foreigner) with curious eyes and schoolgirls in groups giggling and smiling at you when they pass by...oh, and they throw in the occasional "Hello, what's your name?" banter in to :P.


I pretty much slept through the trip, and when I opened my eyes we were already in Alexandria! :) This city situated by the Mediterannean Sea was much for colourful than Cairo :) For one, "the buildings has other colours aside from brown!" as Woonie exclaimed :P And of course you can see the sea :)...Even though Cairo is the capital of Egypt, all of us generally had the feeling that Alex seemed to be bigger and more developed. Of course this might be just the facade tricking us....Some of the buildings had some European style to them as well, and reminded me of the buildings we saw in Europe :)..

To get to our first destination, we drove into more of the inner part of the city (I think, I might be wrong as I have never been famous for my sense direction:P) and we saw bazaar scenes and stuff along the way :) I managed to capture a few shots with my digicam, but again, that feeling of being "In the Bubble" was strong within me:P...but as Woonie commented (and I agreed ;)), Egypt seems to be a pretty good place to take pictures of...you know, human emotions and "people living their daily life" kinda subjects...I mean as we are driving through the bazaar area, there are all these people walking, buying and selling stuff, some of them so near your van you can touch them if you were to just reach out your hand...and sheeps and donkeys (which is a very common mode of transport in Egypt...), well, you get the idea:)


We then went to our first place of interest, the Kom El-Shuqafa Monuments or also known as the Catacombs. Cameras were not allowed in so the only pic I have of the place is this one of me OUTSIDE it:P. The Catacombs are a relic of the Roman conquest of Egypt. Unlike the Egyptians who mummified their dead, the Romans would burn their dead and then keep their ashes in an urn, and the urn will then be buried in the Catacombs. We had to walk down a spiral staircase carved out of the brown earth (which had Noha freaking out cuz she gets woozy in this kinda places), and inside is like this huge underground cellar like place with lots of storage space. There were no more urns inside (either they were looted or maybe people from long long ago discovered them but didn't realize their historical values and destroyed them) but there sure was a lot of rooms for the urns...the place actually has around 3 floors but the bottom floor is flooded so its not accesible to the tourists...can't imagine how they made the place.

There were also paintings on the walls which were a combination of Egyptian and Roman influences (including one of an Egyptian God, Anubis I think who has curly hair ala Roman style), as well as two Roman-like tiny statues flanking the entrance to this altar-like place. There were also some bones of horses which initially scientists thought were human bones but then they found out that it was too big to be human. Supposedly the horses were quite revered at that time, not just because they were rare in Egypt but also because they were animals that helped man a lot (carry things, as transport, for war etc) so when they died they were given the honour of being buried in the Catacombs with the humans.

Our next stop was Pompey's Pillar. Basically it was a very tall, Roman-esque column and a sphinx on top of a hill with a garden at the bottom :P Actually there are 3 Sphinxes on the hill, and one of them is made from a different material which gives it its darker shade which differs from the other 2 Sphinxes, but sadly, the only Sphinx that has survived the years with its head intact is the one that you see in this picture:P





By this time we were getting pretty hungry, but we decided to stop by one last destination before heading for lunch. We drove by the coastline to get to the Citadel and the road reminded me strangely of Gurney Drive in Penang:P. The Citadel was built as a fort with mosque inside it (read links below for more information), and it was a pretty short trip for us as we were not allowed to go inside (and maybe partly because we were hungry:P). There were people fishing by the seaside, and also the most amazing array of "mummified" sea creatures on sale:P There were these huge preserved starfish, seashells, blowfish, even a sea turtle! Kok Hin calls it the Egyptians' mummification expertise:P There were also a few fox furs on sale which was a first for me, though I'd rather not know how those creatures were skinned :(.


Lunch was next! =D Again we had it at a tourist-only restaurant, and it was fresh seafood from the Mediterannean Sea! :) This huge smoked fish, savoury rice, crabs and prawns (loved them:)). I've never been a huge fan of fish as I have a bit of phobia towards them after swallowing a fish bone once when I was young:P, but I was hungry so it tasted good all the same :). This time around we had brought along our own water from the hotel, and we surely needed it as the fish & rice were quite salty. There was also the usual veggie (some of them pickled) and yoghurt(I think) side dishes, and I remember me and Wooonie kept eating the potatoes to balance out the saltiness:P It was a fulfilling meal all the same, and we left quite eager for our next stop.

We then went to Bibliotheca Alexandria, or better known as Alexandria Library. The facade is stunning, its kinda round with all these letters, alphabets and hieroglyphs carved in it. There is a bust of Alexander the Great outside (Alex was named after him after all ;)), and the inside of the library was....wow. I didn't bring my camera in (I thought it wasn't allowed but it was, Aarrgh!!), but the inside was just this bright, clean space with shelves and tables and PCs....and lots of glass railings and stuff so you can look down from 3 floors up and see all the people reading and searching for books on the bottom floor...I don't know how to describe it:P The collection of books did not seem as extensive as I expected, but then they might be dwarved by the size of the place. I suppose the Alexandria Library also got its reputation from its 'predecessor", the ancient Great Library of Alexandria which supposedly was once the largest in the world in 3rd Century BC and contained the biggest collection of ancient documents but was destroyed in a fire 2000 years ago :(.

Our last stop for the day was the Momtazah palace. More driving pass the coastline and the Stanley Bridge, and then we reached the palace grounds. The whole place is huge and used to be owned by only one royal family:P We were getting thirsty so we stopped at a McD (which was within the palace grounds!) to get some drinks, and my medium-sized Coke costed me RM10! Again, shocked by the expensive-ness of it all but, hey anything to quench my thirst :) Saw a couple of cute Egyptian cats (they're called Ota :) ) around, before we proceeded on to the bridge in the park where we took a few pics of the Momtazah Palace. Dusk was falling over the Mediterannean Sea...and that was the image of Alex we left with as we headed back to Cairo for dinner...:)


Slept again along the way, lullabied by Egyptian music which had a lot of "habibis" thrown in the lyrics :P (Habibi is 'My Love' in Arabic) Stopped by for a pee break and took this pic of cactuses...by the way, there is a tipping culture in Egypt so we tipped the lady at the rest room. According to Noha, the lady works there unpaid by the person who owns the rest house, so she only survives by the tips that people give her. Hard life...looked around for snacks and water, again, everything was very expensive so nope, didnt get anything...

Dinner was actually quite similar to yesterday's hehe:P Chicken kebab with rice...but as we were walking up the restaurant the waiter gave us this steaming hot, fresh from the oven Egyptian bread which was something like Nan....YUM..that was heavenly...especially as it was a pretty chilly night:P But unfortunately the bread they served us for dinner itself were not that hot so it wasn't as nice as THAT first bite...

After that it was back to the hotel where we were supposed to pack up as it was our last night in Cairo...by this time all 3 of us were parched as we couldn't find any supermarkets to get water! Thankfully Sharif got us 3 bottles after we told him about our predicament...he was so nice:) he was like "you guys stay here in the van", and then he went out to get us 3 big bottles of mineral water for RM1.50 each :) No doubt if we had went on our own we would have been SO ripped off...Then it was back to the hotel, where we all had chocs and watched "Spirited Away" on the telly together before calling a night:)...


Ps : Below are links you can go to for more info on the places we visited :)
http://www.egyptsites.co.uk/lower/delta/western/alexandria.html
http://www.nileboats.com/photos/photo_qaitbay.htm