Alexandria

This past weekend Chris, Spencer, Jim, Ali, Jessica, Kassie, and I went to Alexandria. Chris and Ali had bought tickets two days before we left and we showed up at the trainstation packed and ready after class on Thursday. Other than needing help figuring out which platform to go to and which train to get on, the train ride went smoothly. We travelled second-class and the cars really were very nice. The problems didn't start until we were on the train.

We had heard that hotels in Alexandria don't really do reservations and that you just walk in and get a room. Since it isn't peak tourist season, we did not think that this would be a problem. About an hour into the ride, Ali and Jim decided to start calling hotels. Someone had recommended the Crillon, but it was full. So was the next one we tried. At this point we pooled all of our Frommers, Rough Guides, and National Geographic Travelers to find a place to stay for the night. Complicating the matter was that not all hotels have bathrooms in the rooms. After at least five tries, we found a place. Crisis averted.

Then we arrived in Alexandria. Getting out of the tainstation was fine, but then you go through that whole "we're in a bran new city unknown to any of us" thing and you realize you have no idea where to go. Luckily all of these travel books have maps so getting our bearings wasn't too hard. We just had to figure out what direction the Mediterranean was in and walk. Then we could take the Corniche west towards the hotel. But seven white tourists wearing huge backpacks pouring over travel guides outside of a trainstation in the second largest city in an Arab country attracts attention. Figuring out how to get from point A to point B in a foreign city is hard enough; it's even harder when you have six different strangers trying to offer you a taxi ride in broken English.

After figuring out how to get to our hotel, Jim, Spencer and I decided to walk it while everyone else took a cab. Unfortunatley, there are two trainstations in Alexandria. We were under the impression that we had come in at Masr Station, just south of our hotel. Instead, as we discovered after over an hour of walking, that we had come in at Sidi Gaber station, over three miles west of the hotel.

I didn't mind the length of the walk. Half the fun of being in Alexandria that first night was navigating and exploring. We knew that we had to walk straight north to get to the sea, but no road goes straight. We walked through narrow streets filled with shabby little shops and vendors selling fruit off of carts; allies draped with Christmas lights and banners. The walk to the sea took us through the decidedly un-touristy and thouroughly fascinating side of Alexandria. We drew stares wherever we went.

And then there was the thrill of cresting a hill in the street and seeing the dark expanse of the Mediterranean for the first time. After walking through rows of lighted shabby apartment building we saw the blackness of could only be the sea. It was especially exciting because for the first time we saw the body of water around which ancient civilzation was centered, and our navigation skills were instantly confirmed.

Once we reached the Mediterranean, we walked west along Corniche running parallel to it. After stopping at a Pizza Hut for dinner (1. we had not eaten since lunch at school and it was almost 11:00pm; 2. Pizza Huts and KFCs are strangely common throughout Egyptian cities) We stopped next to the one landmark we recognized, the Bibliotheca Alexandria, and reassessed our location. Relatively speaking, we did not have far to go. At this point, the rest of our crew had already reached the hotel and gotten rooms. It was very relaxing to finally reach the hotel and lay down.

Then at 1:00am, we get a knock on our door. A hotel worker begins trying to speak to us in Arabic, which we can't really understand. Imagine being in foreign city, to which you have never been before, and someone begins speaking gibberish to you. It is clear that he has a problem with you, but you don't know what it is, much less how to fix it. Here we were in a shabby discount hotel, with a man trying to get us to respond to him, but we have no idea what to do. We communicated with what little Arabic we knew and some handsignals and he eventually left and we thought everything was taken care of. Then we get another knock. He returned with woman we spoke a little English. Between her English and our Arabic, we figured out that the four of us could not stay in one room despite there being two beds. We had to get a second, which was no big deal, but communicated this was a chore. At the same time, the guy kept asking for our passports, saying he needed to make copies of them. In our eyes, this request immediatley upped the seriousness of the situation. I refused to hand him my passport and instead the four of us accompanied him downstairs to the front desk. There we established that all we had to do was get another room . We did so and straightened everything out.

For me, this incident gave our trip a very negative beginning. But once we started our day the next morning, I began to feel better about the trip. We took a cab to the trainstation and bought return tickets for Saturday and began our tour by visiting the excavated Roman ampitheater near the station. Then we walked to Pompei's Pillar and the Catacombs. Trying to navigate between these places with vague travel maps added to the adventure. Also adding to the atmosphere of adventure, but much more sobering, was the poverty of the area in which these historical sites are located. Here we were, seven American tourists, ready to throw down 15 LE ($3) per attraction, whereas the cabbie was thourougly satisfied with our bargain-free offer to pay 5 LE ($1) for the short ride from our hotel to the trainstation. That's $1 total for the ride, not per person. Seeing the ancient wealth of the city of Alexandria mixed with its contemporary poverty was moving. It was strange to think about the huge shiny tour buses filled with comparatively wealthy tourists navigating the narrow streets lined with beat up cars, horse-drawn produce carts, and tiny drink stands in order to get to the historical sites.

After we finished the tour of the old Grecco-Roman ruins, we took a cab up to Qaitbay, a fortress built on a finger of land jutting out into the Mediterranean. It is rumored that it was built from the ruins of the Pharos Lighthouse. The fortress was surprising intanct and offered great views of the sea and Alexandria. Once finished here, we found a restaurant reccomended universally in our guidebooks. A short walk from Qaitbay in a back alley was the classy Qadoura seafood restaurant. Instead of odering off of a menu, you pick your fish from an icepack filled with freshly caught fish. Our group ordered grouper, sea bass, calamaria, and eel. It was delicious.

We concluded the day with arguably the best of all the places we visted in Alexandria: the Spitfire Bar. In a city where the Star Spangled Banner was conspicuously absent from any hotel flying international flags, Spitfire offered reminders of the states along with an amazingly unique ambiance. Sptifire is a hole in the wall. Probably onlt 14' x 50,' the seating area was full and only seated thrity people max. It was dimly lit, and the walls were covered in grafitti and random American and German memorabilia. The Union Jack was hanging on the ceiling. They offered cheap prices on a selection of Egyptian beers, and, best of all, they played only classic American rock. The owner has no clue about American music. Instead, he has a collection of mix CDs given to him by patrons and lets the night's clientle choose the music. Here we were in Alexandria, Egypt, where only the night before a minor problem got turned into a painful ordeal over the inability to communicate, drinking in a bar with multiple red and yellow Semper Fi bumper stickers on the walls and the Doors playing in the background. The owner chatted with us for a while. He knew Greek, German, English, and Arabic. He himself was either of Arabic or Mediterranean descent. It will be hard for any bar I ever go to to top the uniqueness of this tiny classic rock bar in the middle of conservative Alexandria.

The following morning we attempted to go the Grecco Roman museum, but it was closed. The only noteworthy thing was taking the rickety tram ten stops from our location in Alexandria to the train station. The ride took 30 minutes and only cost 25 Piasters, or $0.05. That's right. Five U.S. cents. We were the only white people in the car. After the trainstation it was back to Cairo and time to do the weekends homework for class on Sunday.