Pictures of Alexandria

So, here is a lovely little photo album of our trip to Alexandria. If you want to see more pictures of anything, let me know in the comments section--I simply had too many to put them all up!

For better pictures and information about Alex, go here.

Here is the waterfront of the Eastern Harbor, where are hotel was located. It is really something else.

This is the harbor from the inside of the old Mamluk fort on the Western tip of the harbor crescent.










Here are a few pictures I took walking around the street. I thought they were kind of National Geographicesque. One big thing to notice about these pictures is the sheer amount of color in the buildings and sky. You won't see anything like this in Cairo...ever. The buildings are all pretty much the same dirty grey color and you can't really see the sky for the smog most days. This color was one of the first things that struck me about Alex.



























This is a shot of the big archaeological site we went to. (you couldn't take pictures in the catacombs.) It is called "Pompey's Pillar" (I don't think it actually had anything to do with Pompey historically) and it is one of the few remaining vestiges of the ancient city which once occupied the area.




These last two pictures are from the new Bibliotheque Alexandria...it was finished in 2002 and is built on the site of the historical Great Library. It is a kind of weird and futuristic structure, but still very beautiful. It is supposed to look like a disc coming out of the ground (symbolizing something but I don't remember what) and that is exactly what it does look like. Inside, the main reading room cascades down in a series of terraced levels, while the ceiling slants down into the ground, with skylights completely covering it.
















Ok, I lied and this is the real last picture...for our respective boat obsessed dads :-)

Alexandria

Today we just returned from a wonderful weekend trip to Alexandria. We left Thursday night, taking the express train--which, given how fast it travels, is rather optimistically called the "turbini"--arriving in Alexandria at around 9pm. From the train station we walked to the water, where we promptly realized that we'd gotten off one stop too early, and that downtown Alexandria was still 3 or 4 km to the west of us. This prompted us to take our first microbus ride in Egpyt, which was fun in a slightly hairraising kind of way. Ubiquitous in Cairo, microbuses are small, boxy vans designed to hold about 10 passengers, but which you can often see holding almost twice that number. (They also often load and unload without fully stopping. But they're really cheap!) Anyway, we managed to find the main square, and checked into our hotel. Called the Hotel Crillon, it was nice enough, if a little bit small and dingy. The important thing is that it was cheap, served breakfast, and was located right on the Corniche (the roadway and walkway that run along the water). Also, the manager and the two bellhops (whose uniforms looked rather comically like monogrammed pajamas) were extremely nice.

Over the course of our two days, we managed to see four interesting sights. Friday morning we started the Catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqura, which are apparently the oldest surviving Roman burial grounds in Egpyt. Our guidebook reports that they were discovered in 1900 when a donkey cart servicing other excavations suddenly fell underground! The catacombs consist of a vertical circular shaft, off of which there is a main tomb, a hall where last rites were performed, and a maze of passageways for more bodies. All in all, the complex housed about 300 bodies, which doesn't seem like all that much given how much digging it must have required. The most interesting aspect of the catacombs was the weird mix of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman artistic themes in the decorative carvings. From there we walked over to Pompey's Pillar, which, confusingly, apparently has nothing to do with Pompey, but once supported a statue of Diocletian. Anyway, its a huge pink pillar surrounded by some very rather indistinct ruins of a temple and a Roman cistern, which an overly friendly member of the Egyptian tourist police insisted on leading us through.

In the afternoon, we walked on the Corniche around the harbor to a 16th-century Mamluk fortification called Fort Qaitbey. The famous Alexandria lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, once stood on the spot where the fort now lies, helping fishing and trading boats keep track of the location of the harbor. For a structure that is half a millennium old, the fort is very well preserved, and we had a lot of fun exploring it. (It reminded me a lot of clambering around ruined castles as a kid on a family vacation to Scotland.) Claire has lots of great pictures of it, some of which she'll post.

Which brings me to the one big disappointment of the weekend: I lost my camera. It was completely my own fault, but that doesn't make it feel any better. As we got into a cab, I took it out of my pocket so that I wouldn't sit on it, and then when we got out I only remembered it moments after the cab had driven away. This is particularly frustrating because I hadn't been able to download any of the pictures I had taken thus far here, since I left the requisite cord at home. And of course, that cord is arriving in a package that we are expecting to receive any day now. Such is life. Fortunately, Claire has her camera, and she has almost all of our really good pictures anyway. I can get a new one here very soon, but it still sucks.

I have a few more random thoughts about the trip and the contrast between Alexandria and Cairo, but this post is plenty long enough as it is, so I'll save them for later.

Trivialities

This afternoon in our Ameya class we learned that unlike their American counterparts, Egpytian sheep say "maa," Egyptian dogs say "how" and Egyptian cats say "neow." You learn something everyday!

Also, I scored a major victory today in my never-ending quest for small bills that I can use to pay taxi fares, procuring 200 LE worth of 5 LE notes from the bank branch at the university. A good day all around.

Marsa Alam

This past weekend we had our first excursion out of Cairo, and it was fantastic. For Muslims this weekend was the Eid, the holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan, so we had two days off from school. We took advantage of a the long weekend by going on a trip our program organized (and subsidized) to a beach resort on the Red Sea about 100km north of the town of Marsa Alam. We left very early Friday morning, and our very slow-moving tourbuses arrived in mid-afternoon (if you look on a map of Egpyt, Marsa Alam is on about the same latitude as Luxor, i.e. very far from Cairo). The long trip itself was interesting--we were driving along the Red Sea coastline for most of the time, which we expected to have vegetation, but actually the Egyptian desert extends right up to the water. (Claire noticed about halfway through the weekend that there were no seagulls or birds of any kind at the resort--that's why.) For the most part the coastline is pretty deserted, with just the occasional town, resort, military checkpoint, or abandoned mining operation.

The resort we were at was the Akassia Swiss Resort, which was huge, luxurious, and full of vacationing Europeans. (Claire will post pictures later, but for now check out their website.) We stayed in an enormous room with a large domed ceiling and a balcony overlooking one of the dozen or so pools the resort had. We spent most of our time sleeping, reading, lounging by the pools, and snorkeling. The resort's beach was actually very small, but that was because there was a large reef only a few yards into the water. The resort sponsored (very expensive) diving trips along the reef, but we opted for the much cheaper option of snorkeling, and it was great. For less than $10 a day, we rented gear and were able to swim along this an underwater cliff full of coral and teeming with brightly colored tropical fish. We made sure to go each day.

We both thought the resort was great, I have to admit it had a rather strange atmosphere. Akassia advertises itself as a 5-star resort, but it had a lot of features that you would never expect to see at a really luxury place. For instance, the showers had almost no hot water, and while breakfast and dinner buffets were provided free of charge, it was almost impossible to find food in the middle of the day. Also, there was no wifi despite advertisements to the contrary, and several of the buildings, including an entire waterpark (also referenced heavily in advertisements) were still under construction. It's not like these things were really a problem for us--it's just that when you go to a resort like that, part of what you are buying is an experience of a complete and perfect illusion, except this illusion had a bunch of holes in it. Judging from the rest of the guests, probably what was going on was that the resort was catering not to the really rich but rather to solidly middle-class Europeans who
would not be able to afford a vacation at a beach resort on the Mediterranean, say. That marketing strategy requires lower prices, and I guess the costs have to come from somewhere.

Anyway, it was a wonderfully relaxing weekend--really the first time that both of us have felt utterly and completely at ease since we arrived. The jaunt out of Cairo recharged us, and we liked it so much that we've resolved to do it again again and go to Alexandria as soon as possible, probably next weekend. Excitingly, Sherifa, our ameya teacher, out of the blue expressed an interest in possibly going with us (along with some of the other students in our class) to Alexandria sometime, which would be awesome beyond words. She has clearly taken more than a usual liking to our class, and it's hard to imagine someone it would be more fun to travel with here. However, her father--whom we met briefly at the iftar at her house--has been sick for the past few days, so we'll see whether that works out or not. Cross your fingers.

Iftar Chez Sherifa

Well, I didn't take any pictures at Sherifa's iftar because my camera battery had died, but I shall do my best to describe. First off, Sherifa is awesome and her iftar was awesome. For those of you just tuning in, Sherifa is our Egyptian Colloquial teacher and she is pretty much everyone's favorite teacher. She is very small and very feisty and an excellent teacher. Our beginner Ameya (colloquial, although I'm unsure about the transliteration) is the only class she teaches for our program because she focuses mainly on teaching the advanced students in the super intense program called CASA (I don't remember what that stands for, but they can't speak any English while they are on AUC's campus). I feel a little bit as though we are more of an ideological statement on her part than anything else, but it's a lot of fun and we are learning more than I ever would have thought possible.

Anywho, on Friday night we all (the six of us in the class) went over to her apartment for iftar, a word which litterally means breakfast and is used to mean the meal in the morning and the meal at sundown during Ramadan which breaks the daily fast. So far we had mainly experienced iftar as an errie hour or so in which the streets of Cairo are empty (something which doesn't ever happen at any other time, including three or four in the morning). This time we got to be a part of the meal!

We had more food than I think I had ever eaten in one sitting before. First there was an apricot drink made from dried apricots which is apparently a traditional Egyptian way for breaking the fast. Then there was delicious lentil soup, stuffed vegetables (eggplant, peppers, squash, and tomatoes stuffed with rice and herbs), koftah (very Egyptian meat dish), another kind of meat (veal seems to be very big here), a rice dish made with caramelized sugar, nut and rasins, and babaganoush, yogurt, and a green salad or cucumbers and tomatoes. Sherifa and her sister had made everything and it was all (well, I didn't eat the meat) absolutely delicious. It is the first time I've had home-cooked Egyptian food and, it may sound cliched, but it made me feel so much more comfortable than I have generally felt while here. There is something about sharing food that creates an extremely strong sense of inclusion.

After all of this, there was an enormous array of desserts. There were several that were homemade and then there were the pastry shop desserts that we had all brought with us. We lingered over tea and dessert for well over two hours, just talking about Egypt, Arabic, and each other. Sherifa told us all about her family and about how she became an Arabic teacher (it is hard to place her age exactly, but I think she is in her early forties). She has an opinion about everything and is one of the few people who have openly discussed politics with us thus far. It was extremely interesting to here her thoughts about the government, religion, language and about how things have changed in the course of her life time. I think that is was probably the best six hours I have spent in Cairo.

Our plan now is to invite her to our apartment for a thanksgiving dinner, but we shall have to see how traditional it can really be. I don't have the slightest clue as to how one would procure a turkey, let alone attempt to cook it in our oven!

More pictures

We went to the Khan, yet again. Here are some pictures and tomorrow I will tell you all about our great iftar with Sherifa!

Here is a groovey picture of a lamp shop.

For whatever reason (because it's Cairo) they were doing serious "roadwork" at 10 pm in the middle of a very crowded street....interesting.

Isn't this chandelier cool? It was in a great little antique shop that made me think of Mom and Morgen.


This is just plain cool.

I'm back!

Hello all! After many long days away I am returned to the blogosphere. To make up for my complete failure as a blogger I am going to try to add some pictures to this one. I don't know what exactly Bill has written about. but two weekends ago we went to the Khan ElKhalidi, the biggest market/souk/craziness in Cairo. It was really cool and completely overwhelming in the best kind of way. It is located in Islamic Cairo (which is just a term signifying when that piece of the giant jigsaw puzzle that is Cairo was founded/built) an absolutely beautiful part of the city, retaining a fair amount of medieval architecture that makes for a welcome change from the rather modernist and utilitarian architecture that dominates downtown and the neighborhoods west of the Nile. The Khan is basically a huge labyrinth of alleyways and unpaved streets (this doesn't stop giant whales of tour buses from pushing their way through it) filled with shops selling everything under the sun. Everything from local spices to mass produced clothing from china or somesuch. In some ways it is very touristy in that it is quite a spectacle, but it is actually a real market when tons of Cairenes love to do their shopping. It is apparently always packed, but is particularly impressive during Ramadan. At the center of the Khan is a tea shop called Fishawi's that claims to have been open everyday for over 200 years. It was predictably crowded, so we went to the edge of the Khan and got "Egyptian pancakes," which are somewhere between a funnel cake and a crepe and are incredibly delicious.

Anywho, this weekend the government apparently decided to make a new holiday, or move a holiday, or something, and so we have an unexpected long weekend this weekend. This a really exciting for a number of reasons. We had originally planned to go to Alexandria this weekend, but then we had sort of canceled that because our amazing and wonderful Egyptian Colloquial teacher invited our class over to her house for a real live Egyptian Iftar on Friday. Now that we have Sunday off, however, we are thinking of going up Saturday morning and coming back Sunday evening. We will see what happens. Iftar is, as well as being the word for normal "breakfast" is also what they call the breaking of the Ramadan fast after the sun goes down. It's a big exciting deal--if you walk down the street just before sundown you see tons of tables set up along the streets filled with yummy looking food and surrounded by very hungry looking people. It's a big social event, but since we don't really have any Egyptian friends yet we haven't been able to experience it. I will be sure to write all about that. Until then....