Egypt. I never really thought I'd go to Egypt. I never really thought I'd go to Africa in general let alone two countries in this continent. When we walked off the ship we all kind of concluded that we never thought we'd see palm trees in Egypt really. It was hot. We're in Egypt. What did we expect? Rain? No, I expected the heat, and I really honestly didn't think it was as bad as it could've been...but I didn't expect the humidity. The board in the port read, '76%' humidity. At that point, it should practically be raining with all that humidity! As we were leaving the port, a bunch of men were sitting out there with their shady blue taxi cabs and the harassment began. As the followed us practically out of the port, I turned to my friends and said, "Let the fun begin." Turkey was bad with the harassment received being American females in a foreign, Muslim country, Egypt is apparently worse. When we got out of the port we weren't sure where to go so we kind of tagged along with another group for a bit. After awhile we got to the harbor where we wanted to be. Emily, Aeriale, Carrie and I headed to the Alexandria Bibliotheca which is a huge library here in Alexandria built very close to the location where the ancient library was built before it burned down. We went inside and we got a free tour by a very nice tour guide. It was amazing. The shape of the building is very unique. It is circular and it is slanted to represent the setting sun over the Mediterranean. There were lines of blue and green lights on the ceilings that represent land and water; earth's two main elements. The library has the largest sitting space of any library in the world and it has the capacity to hold 8 million books, though it doesn't hold that many. There were a number of ancient printing presses displayed in the main area and a couple of exhibitions that we were able to view including a copy of the only scroll that survived the fire. There was also a book that was taken by Napolean Bonaparte on his voyage for 3 years or something to that affect. This place was full of interesting and amazing information. After we stayed there for a while we decided to go grab lunch. And when in Egypt, clearly...go to Pizza Hut! I know you're probably shaking you're head right now, but all we've heard the past few days was, "Buy your pepto" and "Chronic diarrahea" and all that great stuff, so we decided to try and play it safe since we're getting legit Egyptian food tomorrow.
We went in and my friend Emily and I shared a cheesy bites pizza for 33+ Egyptian Pounds. With tax and tip, I paid no more than 4 USD for my meal. In the states, you'd pay at least $17 for that pizza. That was crazy. It didn't live up to US Pizza Hut standards, but it was decent. It seems like everywhere else has different views of pizza toppings. On the ship, they put the pepperoni underneath the cheese, in Italy and many other European countries, pepperoni was not an option, here pepperoni was beneath the cheese again and it was 'all beef' pepperoni since Muslims can't eat pork. We also had to be mindful of how we ate. Muslims believe that your left hand is 'unclean' and so it is very disrespectful to eat or shake hands with someone with your left hand. Not that I typically eat with my left hand since I'm right handed, but when I was cutting my pizza I typically just pick up my food with my life hand since my fork's already there.
After Pizza Hut we wandered around a small bazaar. It was rather sad. This country is in such poverty and compared to other African countries, I feel like this place is doing pretty well for themselves. We were told not to buy the stuffed animals here because sometimes they hide insect eggs in them so they will hatch in your room...disgusting. We grabbed a cab to try and go to Pompey's Pillar. The poor taxi drover spoke very little English and got confused and dropped us off at the Roman theatre which was pretty much far from anywhere we wanted to be. We grabbed another taxi and got ourselves to the pillar. Pompey's Pillar, 'a 25 m red granite column constructed in honor of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. Nearby are subterranean galleries where sacred bulls were sacrificed. After his defeat by Julius Caesar in the civil war, Pompey fled to Egypt where he was murdered in 48 B.C. and buried there." It pretty much reminded me of ruins. It was really cool and a nice man gave us a tour of everything including where the bulls were sacrificed and stuff.
We finally left there and came back to the ship. So far my observations of Alexandria is that it is filthy dirty, there's much more poverty here than anywhere else I encountered in the previous countries, and they are crazy drivers. There are no lights or cross walks here. When I was reading wikitravel the other day it said that you pretty much pay Frogger to cross the street, and it's so true! We also heard that the buses and microbuses are shady because of the capacity they fill them to. We saw that first hand today as well. Most of them don't even stop to let people out and you can see people sitting on each other's laps and standing in these large vans (which is essentially what these 'buses' are). And when it's time to get out, you better be ready and quick because they slow down a little bit, but chances are you're jumping out of a still moving vehicle. A girl who is a student here spoke to us yesterday at preport because she was born in Cairo and has spent at least 3 months out of every year here since she was born and attended the American University in Cairo for a year before going to college in Minnesota. She told us just to stay away from buses because her uncle or some relative died of heat stroke on them. Most countries we've encountered don't have air conditioning at all. Luckily, the cabs are pretty cheap, but the unfortunate thing is the language barrier and trying to get people to understand where you're going and price you're going to pay. The constant honking drove me nuts. Every second there would be someone honking at each other, it's not even that they're angry with each other it's their way of notifying someone that they're turning or something like that. Also, our one cab driver didn't use turn signals. If he was turning left he just stuck his arm out the window like he was riding a bicycle. And there is no mercy for those pedestrians because we almost hit like 30 people throughout the course of our day including a little girl. No one gets worked up though, apparently that's the way of life here.
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