Fi Iskindiriyya?

I feel like we were only in Alexandria for maybe two hours. We did so many things in such a short period of time.

Going to bed after 3am and waking up the next morning at 6:45am is NOT a trend I care to perpetuate. I have no idea how I haven't fallen over and passed out in various places. I slept okay last night, and got out of bed around 7am to shower before a long day in Alexandria. We made it to breakfast five minutes before the vans were leaving, so we grabbed some food and headed out to try and get good seats on the van. I ended up in the back corner for the 3-hour ride, and I guess it wasn't so bad. It didn't feel very long since I slept through part of it. It was mostly farmland and bad billboards for the whole ride, but then as we got closer to Alexandria, we started catching glimpses of the Mediterranean Sea, and it's GORGEOUS. Maybe it's just because I haven't seen a body of water, aside from the Nile, in a month, but it just looked so good. We pulled over in Saad Zaghloul Square to let out the people who were staying overnight, so they could check into their hotels and scope the area out for later on.

The group that wasn't staying over took our designated van and headed to the first destination, Qaitbay's Citadel, which was this huge sandstone citadel right on the water. I did NOT want to leave that place. As hot as it was, and as much as the sun was beating down, the smell of the ocean reminded me how much I am dying to go to Jones Beach and get my summer going. It was beautiful to stand on the Citadel wall and just feel the cool breeze, and watch the fishermen do their thing. I've never seen a sky as blue as it was at the citadel. We wandered around a little bit and explored some of the upper floors and lower corridors and after about an hour, when the other group showed up, we decided it would be in the best interest of group who only had about 7 hours in Alexandria to split up and head to the Catacombs instead of sticking around the citadel for however long the other group would take.


We got to the catacombs and ended up having to leave our cameras in the ticket booth because weren't allowed to take them in. That freaked me out even at the US Embassy, so leaving my camera in a little shack outside these catacombs made me a little nervous. I did it though, and my camera was still there when I got back. The catacombs were pretty sweet. It was a series of tunnels and corridors that led down to rooms full of burial chambers. It wasn't creepy down there, at all. I was expecting an eerie kind of feeling, but didn't get one at all. I liked the idea of misdirection that was used by burying the king and queen in an unmarked chamber, and burying different bodies there to prevent the desecration of their bodies. We spent about 40 minutes down there, just kind of wandering around before coming back up to daylight. Our plan was to go ahead to eat while the people who were staying overnight did the catacombs and then all meet up at 4pm for our library tour. That never happened.

As we tried to leave the catacombs, of course the tourism police stopped us and wanted to know how many people were in our group. Of course, the van driver didn't know any better, and told them that there were 35 of us, so instead of letting us leave and go do our own thing, we had to sit and wait for an hour while the other group was in the catacombs. We were all getting a little frustrated/stir crazy at the situation, but we dealt with it by having a dance party, so it was cool. By the time all three vans headed over to the fish market to try to eat before our 4pm appointment at the library, it was already about 3:30pm, and that clearly wasn't happening. A few people gave Joyce a hard time, and I felt pretty bad for her. We were sent to Alexandria on our own, since Cynthia needed a well-deserved weekend off from us, so Joyce was put in charge. Some people just aren't grown up enough to deal with being hungry for an hour or so, and it sucked that she had to deal with that, but she vented and it was cool.

The Biblioteca Alexandrina was probably the coolest library I will ever be in in my lifetime. I was absolutely gorgeous just from the outside, and the inside was humbling. It is so massive. The general construction was amazing both inside and outside. There are eleven levels, two of which can't be seen from the inside, and the decoration of the inside was impeccable. I don't even know how much I can say about it other than how massive it is. The number of books there is incredible. I don't remember the exact number, but there is something like over a million books there on every subject imaginable, in sufficient languages to cater to any person who goes there. One of the coolest things they had was their "espresso" book-copier. It copies 20 pages a minute, I think, and puts out a completely bound, covered, complete book, just like you could buy in the store. I think that's so cool, and it costs a little less to do this than to buy books at a bookstore, so hopefully it'll contribute to efforts to increase literacy around world.
I think that's one of the most important aid efforts and anything to help that is worth any amount of money. After we saw the library-proper area we moved into the galleries of that are also within the library. There were hundreds of paintings and drawings and old maps documenting the development from BC times and everything was so beautifully preserved. Another gallery housed manuscripts of Qu'rans and other holy texts that have been preserved and resotored. Everything was so beautiful and old and humbling. It's definitely humbling to see something so small and simple that has lasted all those years. I liked that there were the small galleries in the library because it gave the building a deeper purpose and made it an even more essential part of the history of the city of Alexandria.

We all left the library together and the vans dropped us off outside a restaurant so we could all have dinner and then leave at the same time. I couldn't be on the Mediterranean and not order seafood, so I ordered so delicious calamari and french fries and some kind of bread that was really light and puffy and tasty. WE ended up waiting around the restaurant for about two hours, until everyone finished eating and got ready to leave, and met up in the vans. I ended up sitting in the same seat as on the way there, with Joyce next to me and Drew on the other end. We all ended up asleep after about 20 minutes, and all managed to wake up at the same time, about 45 minutes before we got back to Flamenco. We split for a little while, but met back up a little later to watch Aladdin [only too appropriate for Egypt, even though we decided it was set in Saudi] and all piled onto Bridget and Diana's beds and it was good times. Ziko and Omar came over, too, and watched with us. There were a few things we had to explain, but for hte most part, it was just a bunch of college students enjoying a classic Disney movie.

By the time it was over, it was pretty late, but we were all pretty hungry, so an unspecified number of us piled into Omar's car and drove out to Ma'adi to go to Route 66 for some burgers. I was considering it on the drive over, which took about 25 minutes from Flamenco, but once I saw one, I decided against it. The burger is LITERALLY the size of my face. It was after 1am, anyway, so I knew that would probably contribute to feeling really shitty in the morning, so instead of eating a whole one, I mooched a bite off of Omar's and some of his french fries. It tasted weird, but I've noticed that about the beef here. I guess we're so used to genetically altered beef that natural, untampered beef tastes funny. It's fine, just really salty. Maybe, one day I'll return to Route 66 and conquer a KGB.

We got home so late, and we are getting up early for horseback riding back to the Pyramids with Omar tomorrow :) I can't wait to go again, this time hopefully with horses that will actually gallop. It's going to be epic.