On the shuttle back to the dorms Thursday afternoon, a friend and I decided to go up to Alexandria. We recruited two more friends, packed, and, at 7, asked the man at the front desk which train station has the trains to Alexandria. We get in the cab, manage to remember the word for train (utta) and directed the driver to the station.
It being the final weekend before Ramadan, more people were traveling than usual, so the next available one was the 10:30, which we were told to return to the station sometime between 11 and 12 if we wanted to catch. We were advised to take a cab (L 300 between the 4 of us) but we decided that sounded sketchy. Since we didn't want to arrive in Alexandria at 3 am without any hotel reservations, we decided to give up for the night, buy tickets for an early train, and return to campus for the night.
We were supposed to take the 9 o'clock train. We met to leave at 8, then discovered that daylight savings time had taken effect, giving us an extra hour. Coffee and a croissant later, we took a cab to the station. The ride, which took a full half- hour the night before, took about 10 minutes, so we stood in the station for a while, repeatedly being asked by Egyptians if we needed any help finding our train.
We had splurged for the 2nd class tickets (L 21, or about $4), so we were in air-conditioned cars. The ride up is about 3 hours, through the countryside along the Nile, so we got to see rural Egyptian life, even if just from a distance. Tractors, or any other type of mechanicalizaion, seem to be a rarity on Egyptian farms, with humans and donkeys doing most of the work.
We got to Alexandria, the train stopped at a station, and we got off. We studied a map, couldn't determine exactly where we were, but determined which general direction was north, so we set out on foot towards the Mediterranean. We reached it within about 20 minutes. After reaching it, we studied our map and determined that we had not actually gotten of at the downtown Alexandria station, but had gotten off in the suburbs. We hailed a cab and a 5-minute taxi ride took us to downtown though.
We found a hotel, the Hotel Union, (highly praised by the Lonely Planet) which had vacancy, so we checked in (at $10 per person for a beach view and private bath). The hotel is a small one, left over from about 1950, with a lobby with marble floors, old leather couches, a view of the harbor, and retired Egyptology professors scattered about.
We set out down the Cornish in search of some tombs that the guidebook recommended. Instead, we found the library. In honor of the ancient library at Alexandria, Egypt recently built a new library. Rather than trying to recreate the classical architecture of ancient Greece, they went with a modern building. The roof is a giant disc slanted down into a reflecting pool at the same level as the harbor, which is across the street. The interior is terraced down with the roofline, and skylights cut into the disc-ceiling look out onto the water. I'm not sure what the quality of the actual collection is, but the building qualified as the coolest library that I've ever been in.
For dinner, we had traditional Egyptian - lamb tagen with okra and a table full of appetizers.
Friday morning we went to the Catacombs. We set off in a cab, got within a few blocks, and encountered tour-buses trying to navigate ancient streets. We gave up on the cab and walked the rest of the way. As we were going into the Catacombs, we ran into the tour group from AUC. We compared itineraries; they were doing significantly more than us, we were actually spending more than 10 minutes at each attraction, and our trip involved no charter buses.
We explored the catacombs for about half an hour, fighting our way through hordes of tour-groups. Afterwards, we walked back downtown to an area that was supposed to have really cool antique shops. We were either misled or lost.
Next, we went to the Roman amphitheater, which was relatively deserted at the time. We discovered the one spot (about one foot wide and high) that produced an echo that reached the entire theater, took pictures of the ruins, and translated some hieroglyphs. One of the guards called us over and led us back into the area behind the stage. He summoned us back, opened a padlocked gate (which he made me nervous by locking behind us) and ushered us in. We crossed over a pit on a bridge made out of single 2x6, wound around behind the chorus section, and reached the area directly behind the stage, partially under the seating. The room had a really interesting vaulted ceiling. The guard led us back out, let us out of the gate, and we tipped him a few pounds.
As the other three of us were planning lunch, the fourth member of our group, Sean, made friends with another guard, who let us into the closed area where the ancient Roman bath ruins were. He led us climbing over ancient ruins as if they were mere rocks so that we could see the old aqueducts and baths. We tipped him a few pounds afterwards.
After that, we had to return to the train station (this time the one downtown) for our train back to Cairo. Unfortunately, somewhere between the amphitheater and the train, my camera disappeared from the side pocket of my bag, so I ended up without any pictures of the trip.
When we got back to Cairo, we compared our trip with the other AUC group that had gone and decided that, though they got to see more attractions, we felt more accomplished. The four of us set out, relying entirely on our own language skills (I'm one of the more fluent of our group of four) and no real plans and made our way there and back successfully.