Alexandria!
So yesterday we had our day trip to Alexandria!
I was rocking 3 hours of sleep when we got up at 7 in order to make it downstairs in time for our 8 AM pick up…. Around 8:30 we had front desk call our tour company, the tour was delayed until a 10:30 pick up since Friday and Saturday are the “weekend” here and the library wouldn’t be open at the right time for us. We popped back upstairs and slept for an other hour and crawled back downstairs when it was time to leave. We ended up having the same TopDeck driver that drove us to the hotel from the airport, he’s a pretty cool dude!
The drive to Alexandria took about 3 hours, I slept for abut 2 hours and 45 min!
Once we met up with our tour guide he told us a bit about the history of Alexandria and how it was invaded by the Persians, then the Greek, then the Romans, then the Arabs, then the Turks, then the French, then the English. He showed us where the old light house was where there is now a castle built with some of the original stones from the light house. Apparently you can dive and see it! Same thing for Cleopatra and Marc Antony’s palace.
Next we visited some catacombs. They were originally discovered when a man’s donkey fell down a deep hole! The inside has hierogliphics and sculptures that are a mix of both Roman and Egyptian mythologies, very rare. The catacombs are slowly being destroyed by the water table unfortunately so they’ll be gone in our lifetime the guide thinks. It was very interesting because the guide is an Egyptologist and has worked in the catacombs so he had all sorts of inside info!
Before visiting the new Alexandria library we stopped for follafle (I have no idea how to spell it), IT WAS DELICIOUS.
The new Alexandria library is beautiful, I strongly suggest you look it up online. The architect put a lot of thought into it! Something about is the sun rising from the primordial water and it’s shaped like a sun dial too.
We took our transport home in the dark, the Alexandria dessert road is very weird, there were speed bumps and u-turn jogs every 20 km or so!
