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!

Mt. Sinai

Note: I have pictures throughout this entry, but these are not all the pictures I took. Check my flickr page for the rest.

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I spent this weekend at Mt. Sinai (where Moses received the 10 Commandments!) with Sarah and Helen. Please remind me, if I ever decide that I want to climb a mountain, that I'm not in great shape and I get really bad altitude sickness. Still, I got some amazing pictures, to it wasn't a total loss.

We left late Friday morning, and took a bus that passed through Suez, and then down the west coast of Sinai (along the Gulf of Suez), and from there into the interior. I have a few pictures from the bus ride:



We were dropped off at St. Katherine's, the monastery at the foot of the mountain, at about 7pm. We were planning to climb up and sleep on the mountain, then wake up to watch the sunrise, but there were no groups leaving near then, and we wanted a guide up, since it was dark. We waited in the courtyard at St. Katherine's until 1 am for a group (we were misinformed about the time, otherwise we might have tried to get rooms so we could sleep). We started up with them, and Sarah and I ended up going a lot of the way by camel (there's a camel path which, while easier to walk than the Stairs of Penitence, is still much easier traversed by camel. The last leg of the journey is impossible by camel, and has to be done on foot. I did it with the help of my guide, Muhammad.



Also, I threw up partway up, probably having to do with my altitude sickness. Muhammad did not begrudge me this, and we had a nice rest. As we climbed, some people who were coming down encouraged us, telling us it was not far to the top. It was kind of nice to interact with strangers, since that's the sort of thing that's usually not a good idea in Cairo. Most of the people climbing Mt. Sinai were religious pilgrims (some sang hymns, in which I joined once I got to the top and regained my breath), and everyone was very cheerful. Once we got to the top, we settled in to watch the sun rise. I got some really nice pictures here (more on my flickr page).





Then, around 8am, Sarah, Helen and I set out for the bottom. Some of my favorite pictures were from the trip down.







I do have to say that I'm glad we did the ascent at night. I'm afraid of heights and probably would not have climbed it if I'd really known how tall it was (about 2285 meters, or 7500 feet). Helen got away from us at some point, and it took Sarah and me a long time to get down, since we hadn't slept, and I was suffering from altitude sickness, and probably dehydration, and I was nauseous, light-headed, and I think mildly delirious (I kept seeing faces in the rocks. I remember the Virgin Mary, John Lennon, and half of Gandalf). I kept sitting down and refusing to move, and I never would have gotten down at all if it weren't for Sarah, who took such amazing care of me and was so considerate and didn't get frustrated with me at all. Still, it took us about 6 hours to get down. And I got really sunburned.

Once we got back to St. Katherine's, the monastery itself was closed to visitors (it's only open three hours per day), so unfortunately we didn't get to see any of the cool stuff they had there. Helen had already headed back to Cairo, but we didn't know this, and she wasn't answering her cell phone, so we took a while trying to figure out what had happened to her. People who worked in the guest house café said that they'd seen her that morning, so we knew she'd gotten down from the mountain. We called my flatmate (also named Sarah), who works for AUC housing, and asked her what to do. She called her boss, who told us just to get home and they'd figure out what was happening with Helen. Sarah and I had missed the bus, so we took a service taxi back to Cairo. It was really expensive, but at that point we were so exhausted (and I wanted to get back to Cairo in case I needed to see a doctor, since medical care in that region isn't very good), that we paid and were driven back. I got back to my apartment at about 11 and went the heck to bed (after finding out that Helen had made it back okay). I felt much better after getting off the mountain, getting some rest in the car, drinking lots of water, and being back in Cairo. I'm staying home from class today, though, and my flatmate's taking care of me. I hope y'all like those pictures. Phew.