ALEXANDRIA

The next day I was much better!!! I HAD to be as we caught a train for Alexandrian early in the morning to go to Donia’s cousin’s wedding. Some of the stomach pains remained but I was no longer barfing up every piece of food I dared to even look at, never mind eat!

Alexandria was so hot. Way hotter then Cairo at the time and really humid. We were dying but Donia’s mom is a slave driver and forced us to go sight seeing all over the place and even though by the end we thought it would not be possible to drink enough water in a month to make up for how much we sweated out that day we saw some really cool stuff. So thanks Donia’s mom!

The heat might have not been so bad if our hotel room hadn’t been so very, very, well… special. They had jammed three beds into a room that looked like it had been built for a single so that we had to climb over one of the beds just to get to the bathroom which you wanted to go in as seldom as possible because it was completely covered in a layer of dust as if someone had left a window open for a year and had not cleaned up since but I suppose we were lucky enough to just to have a private bathroom to ourselves instead of being like the people down the hall who had to share a bathroom with people from other rooms and I guess it was perfectly understandable WHY someone would have to leave a window open constantly there because our room had no air conditioning, other rooms in the hotel had air conditioning but, oh no, not ours! Whew. So yeah, that’s my rant about that. But really, Donia and I didn’t have to much of a problem with it, we thought it was kind of funny and just tried to think of it as camping. But Donia’s poor mom couldn’t deal. She made the lives of every person who worked in that hotel miserable for the full 3 days we were there. There was a never ending stream of bus boys and servers running back and forth from the room, fixing this and moving that. We thought it was pretty funny.

But now, on to the sight seeing…

THE ROMAN PILLAR

hahaha Note the oh-so-pleased faces in this picture!

The Roman Pillar was built by, well obviously, the Romans. One of the really cool things about it was that this ancient building was constructed in order to be able to withstand earthquakes. Under it’s base was a hollowed out area in the rock which acted as a sort of shock absorbers for the huge pillar.

In the area all around the Pillar they have unearthed all kinds of ancient statues and objects, even bathtubs!!

CLEOPATRA’S LIBRARY

Not to be confused with the Library of Alexandria, Cleopatra’s Library was thought to have sunk into the ocean until it was discovered in a series of Catacombs directly below the Roman Pillar.

Book shelves were carved right out from the rock and chambers were dug deep into the earth so they would be cool while they read by torchlight. There were also small holes throughout the caverns about the width of snake holes. These had been secret compartments for very special scrolls that would have been covered over with a perfectly fitted rock and hidden amongst the decorations so that thieves or spies would not be able to get hold of important information.

AQUATIC MUSEUM

Not much to say. The aquatic museum was just about as terrible and upsetting as this table of death that was set up right out side selling souvenirs to tourists.

It made me very sad.

QUIT BEK FORT & CASTLE

Right in the lands’ edge this Fort & Castle over looked the beautiful port of Alexandria.

It had beautiful, intricate stone work inside and employed another form of protection against earthquakes. Like many of the churches we saw while driving through Cairo, this castle had been built by stone masons. It was many stories tall and each floor was supported by arches in all the walls but on every other floor the arches were staggered so that no arch was ever directly above the weak points of another arch. This strengthened the walls and offered protection from earthquakes which is probably why it still stands today.

In this castle we also got to see the sleeping chambers of the king’s harem. There were enough rooms for 21 women in all.

From the windows of the castle you could also see a view of where an ancient city had sunk into the ground. They believe that this city must have been a great centre for art and science in its’ time because of all the incredible pieces they have found down there. Our guide at the castled said that they are constructing a huge underwater museum of the city because much of the treasures down there cannot be moved with out risk of severe damage. They have pulled some things up though and here are some pictures – statues, and yes, more bathtubs!

FOUR SEASONS HOTEL

Remember how angry Donia’s mother was about our hotel? She was so upset that the only thing I think she really enjoyed doing that day was taking a tour of the brand-new-not-yet-open Four Seasons Hotel. It was so cute, it was like she had found her very own castle. She refused to leave and go back to our dismal hotel room until after the host had shown us both ball rooms, the outdoor patios and 4 out of the 6 in hotel restaurants.

EGYPTIAN WEDDING

The following day was Donia’s cousin’s wedding. We did very little that day other than recover from the previous day, whine about no air conditioning and get ourselves ready for the wedding.

The wedding itself was very much like the reception at North American weddings – You rent a hall, serve a fancy dinner, there’s lots of dancing, they cut the wedding cake. The most striking difference was to start the evening off it is traditional to hire a special type of band who play traditional Egyptian wedding songs on drums and flute like things while singing with the bride and groom in the centre and guests circling around them. Here is me, Safa (Donia’s niece), Donia, Ronda (Donia’s cousin) and little Zelia all looking gorgeous at the wedding.

ROMAN AMPHETHEATRE

The Roman Amphitheatre was really cool. They had discovered it while digging out the foundation for a new sports centre.

It was so neat. We’ve talked about these legendary theatres so much in my Theatre courses that it was so amazing to see one in real life. Although this theatre was relatively small compared to many that still exist in Rome and Greece today it still employed the same principals of construction and still worked the same way. In the centre of the stage was a round keystone. When you stood directly on this keystone your normal speaking voice was amplified by the acoustics of the stone seating ten fold!!! It was SO COOL!!!!!

And next to the Amphitheatre there were more, you guessed it, more bath tubs and bathhouses!!

LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

This Library was basically built as a tribute to the great ancient library of Alexandria that had been a storehouse for books, scrolls, art and information from across the world until it was burned down by invaders. It’s got a spacey design and a lot of books and artwork but unfortunately did not make that huge of an impression on us at the end of a long, hot day.

And so, before we knew it, we found ourselves back on the train and heading to Cairo.