Alexandria

This weekend was a four-day break because of Western Easter. I had originally planned to go to Jerusalem with a friend from my Intro to Sufism class, but after the Yeshiva shooting, we were told that security would be crazy at the Israeli border, we'd have to wait forever to get in, and we probably wouldn't have been able to get to the West Bank. So, given that, we canceled that trip, and I didn't think I'd get to do anything fun. But then Sarah's plans also fell through, so we decided to figure out something to do together. We figured mostly we'd hang out in Cairo, but we also planned a day trip to Alexandria (about two hours away by express train).

Our train left from Ramses Station at 8am, and the ride went through the Nile delta - pretty green farmland that reminded me a bit of driving through the midwest. Except for the palm trees and stuff, of course.



When we got to Alexandria we found out that some of the stuff we had wanted to do was closed (the Greco-Roman museum was just closed, and the Biblioteca Alexandrina was closed until 3), so we went to some fort that I didn't know anything about, but it had gorgeous views of the Mediterranean.



It was also full of vendors, and I negotiated pretty intensely to get the price of a wooden bracelet down, bought it, and was asked for my phone number (don't worry Danny, I didn't give the guy my number). This is the second wooden bracelet I've bought so far in Egypt - the first was from that Sudanese refugee craft bazaar I posted about before. I think I'm going to start collecting them when I go other places in Egypt. I also got a really cool present for someone, but it's a surprise, so I won't tell any of you what it is. Mwahaha! I liked that the vendors let me use my Arabic, and seemed pretty impressed with it. I was told I got the "local discount" on the present I bought, although naturally I have no way of knowing whether this was true.



After hanging out there for a while, Sarah and I walked down the street looking for a place to have lunch. We went to this place the Fish Market, which had, seriously, the cleanest and most pleasant bathroom I've seen in all of Egypt. Worth it just for the bathroom, I swear (you know you're traveling in a developing country when a nice bathroom is cause for jubilation and, later, nostalgia)! Also the waiter thought I was cute (this must have been a good day for me), so we got the table with the best view in the restaurant. It looked out over the harbor and the sea beyond, and it was gorgeous! I just ate stuff from the appetizer sampler that they put out with all different mezze (I wish I'd taken a picture, it was a very pretty spread), and Sarah got a fish that she picked out and stuff, and she said it was really good.

After lunch we went to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which is this giant library (it also has a few museums inside) that's supposed to recapture the glory of the ancient Library of Alexandria or something. It was really cool, though, and we stayed there for like three hours.





My favorite part was the Rare Books and Manuscripts collection. These pictures are of "an old print of the Torah written in Hebrew on a long scroll" and an English translation of the Qur'an (with a fold-out map of Arabia, so you'd know where stuff was ^_^). There were more books than just sacred texts (though there were a lot of those), but since I'm a big religion geek, those were my favorites.





At 7 we caught the train home. It was a really nice trip! I found that I liked Alexandria a lot. It's very different from Cairo, but in good ways. The air is cleaner, it's easier to breathe. And there's just something different about the character of the city that's very pleasant. Plus there was the really great bathroom, can't forget that!