Alexandria

We took a three hour bus ride to Alexadria where our first stop was the some Greek ruins. The ruins looked like they were from a Greek theater and I'll be honest, if I wanted to see some Greek ruins I would have gone to Greece.

The next stop was another citadel. This citadel sits right on the Mediterranean and looks like a castle. Walking around and inside it was like being inside a really awesome playground. There are all these different rooms that look out onto the sea, which were once used to look out for impending enemies but are now used for perfectly posed tourist pictures. We just hung out at the citadel for about an hour enjoying the sun and the view.

Afterwards we were supposed to go downtown for lunch but there were some demonstrations going on concerning the bombings of Gaza. To avoid any problems we went to a place that sat right across from the beach and had an amazing meal of fish. I asked what kind of fish it was and they told me it was sea bass. Turns out no matter what kind of fish it is they will just tell you it is sea bass. Apparently they don't differentiate between different kinds of fish. Hence I have no idea what kind of fish it was but I do know that this was the first time that I got a fish presented to me with it's head still on. Awesome.

Since Egypt is a predominantly Muslim nation, the call to prayers are broadcast via loudspeakers throughout the town. Since we were eating lunch around noon we got to see the men lining up on carpets on the sidewalks to pray and we heard the call to prayer over the loudspeaker. Once the call to prayer was done we started to hear a new voice over a loudspeaker. It was louder and it was repeating something over and over. Being that we had been diverted due to protests some of us were wondering what the person was saying and were getting a little anxious. We asked Dr. Gabra what the person was saying. He stood up, went to the window listened for a few seconds, then smiled and said "He wants to sell you 10 tomatoes for 5 pounds."

After lunch we headed over the library of Alexandria. Spoken like a true grad student I will admit, this library was amazing!! It was built in 2002 and through the help of international funds the library is working on digitizing it's whole collection in both Arab and English. The inside not only has kiosks for studying and free computer usage, but sprinkled throughout it also has exhibitions of art, as well as ancient manuscripts. The coolest think though is that they working on digitizing Napoleon's "Description L'Egypt." It is a huge multi-volume work of descriptions of Egypt, with hand drawn pictures and Napleon's take on Egypt. It is a big deal and it's now available online in French, soon to be posted in English and Arabic as well. The best part, it's free. One can just login online and see one of the most comprehensive case studies of Egypt. Like I said, amazing.

After the library we hopped back on the bus for the long ride back to Cairo. I would have loved to stay a few more days in Alexandria. The coast is beautiful, a lot of people said it reminded them of San Francisco. There was much left to explore in the library and I would have loved to eat some more sea bass. But alas, back to C-town we went.