trip to Alexandria

My first overnight trip was this past weekend! We left friday in the very early morning. Well, as you can bet, it was supposed to be a lot earlier than it was. 6:45am was the AIS but that turned out to be more like 7:30. It was a 3 hour bus trip to Alexandria, the ancient city. Once we got there we went to the Fortress or Qaitbay Citadel, which was very neat (there are plenty of photos on facebook if you're bored) because it's old and made of limestone and has all these stairs for getting lost and windows where the wind funnels into your face and blows you out of the room. My hair is all over the place in these photos but the color of the ocean was amazing!

Next was the catacombs, we weren't allowed to bring our cameras inside but this was hands-down the neatest thing I saw! We were deep underground! It was creepy! was discovered more recently (the 1960s?) but no bodies were found. There was a lot of history but it was interesting because nothing is at all certain. How could they know for sure what it was for or who made it? There was an area with Roman, Greek, and Egyptian symbolism and art in the same place. I ended up buying a bunch of post cards for only one dollar!!! That way I can have "pictures" of the catacombs and the artistic detail.

We ate at the Fish Market. It was a little fancier than we were used to (cloth napkins and table cloths!) and this was a bit interesting. I'm a vegetarian who eats seafood and that seafood was a major reason I wanted to go see the Mediterranean Sea! Some students on the trip eat meat but don't like seafood. When asked who was a vegetarian those who didn't want seafood raised their hands and the "pescatarians" did not raise their hand. It was weird. I am a vegetarian, and they aren't but I wasn't raising my hand. Oh well. I ended up getting one of those poor fishies with their head and tail still on but it was fresh and delicious I'll tell you that! And the rice was even enjoyable. I'm happy to be a pescatarian.

We checked in to our hotel and then decided to wander. We crossed the highway. All ten lanes of traffic. Feel free to to freak out about that. It was scary. Afterwards we realized there were tunnels for pedestrians to safely cross the street. Silly Americans. It was about sunset and we walked along the ocean because it was across the street from the hotel. But we couldn't actually walk on the sand. The color of the water was beautiful and the sunset with the Alexandria buildings was amazing. I loved it. I took too many photos of the sun setting that afternoon. All along the walk there were stray cats. I haven't told you much about the cats here yet. Well, they're everywhere. And they cry, eat trash, hiss, and beg for food. I don't like them! But the walk was beautiful.

We went to our hotel and tried to relax. Our hotel room consisted of these three small beds with lumpy mattresses and hard pillows. It had a fridge AND a television though! My roommates were Kathryn and Laura, very nice girls. We watched a game show that was entirely in Arabic, hilarious. The whole evening we were all craving ice cream so eventually we set out to find some. But first we went to this huge mall (comparable to Colorado Mills Mall) that was simply overcrowded. Food Court for dinner, what a treat?! We needed ice cream from Alexandria. It was a huge ordeal because it was freezing outside and a couple of the students who knew their way around were arguing about which place was the best. We walked one direction for twenty minutes and then the other direction until it started raining. It was obvious that we needed to take a cab if we wanted to get ice cream! The place we got to was delicious and deliciously inexpensive. I got two separate things of ice cream! Even though they only had 5 flavors, I was still glad that was the place we went to.

This is me eating my first helping of ice cream.

The next day (saturday) we woke up and went to the Roman theater which was pretty sweet. Similar to the catacombs, it was recently discovered and found under this huge hill. Mom says she watched a documentary about Cairo and those scholars said that some of the ancient world might be underneath Cairo, just like the catacombs and theater of Alexandria. They found a theater for about 800 people, class rooms, and even Roman baths. It was neat because it was so ancient. They even had teams of divers who found chunks of rock sculptures and reliefs. It's always amazing for me to see those and know how old they are and in what good shape these pieces are in considering their age. Goodness gracious.

Next was the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, this ginormous library!! I absolutely loved it. We had this sweet tour guide who told us more than I need to know about it. It's eleven stories and has these windows that are supposed to be shaped like eyes and a fireproofing system because the old library fell to a fire and lost almost everything. There's even a small museum about Alexandria in there that I got to check out. The main library is shaped as a huge circle and tilted to look like a rising sun. It has about 4,000 readers who come through it daily. And has donations from countries all over the world. Norwegians did the architecture and it was cool looking. I wish you could have been there and read a book with me. I bought a planner for school from there because every page has a pretty photo of something in Egypt that I might even have the chance of seeing in real life! After that we had lunch and headed back to campus. It was a very long drive due to traffic and some of us still had homework. I got all my work done and today was a new school day! I also ate in the Americana Cafeteria for the first time, I had subway. They even had jalepenos!!