9:50 am CST
5:50 pm Egypt, Alexandria
I know I've well exceeded my limit on the use of the word "amazing" to describe something. But, it just is! I suppose you could easily insert awesome, stunning, breathtaking, cool, neat, etc at any point.
i'm sitting on my balcony watching and hearing the waves crash ashore, and it's amazing. I've taken the same photo at least ten times. It's a view, but more a feeling, that I don't want to forget. Something about being in Alexandria. This city is oozing with history, you can (well I can) just sort of feel it in the air, yet its odd in its lack of physical proof. What city is more fabled than the legendary Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great, stage of the Cleopatra, Caesar, and Antony saga, home of the world-wonder lighthouse and the greatest library in the ancient world? But there's virtually no remaining evidence of any of it, and what does remain lies at the bottom of the harbor. Except for this statue of Isis, recently brought up fom the depths and believed to be from Cleopatra's Palace:
There is totally different vibe in this city from Cairo. I wouldn't even know they were in the same country. On the whole, Alex is more, for lack of a better word, cosmopolitan. Cleaner, by far. I actually saw trash bins. More orderly, less overt poverty, though I did see homeless for the first time. (I think everything is run down enough and everyone is moving so fast in Cairo that you can't tell.) The walkway along the sea is awesome. Alex is a very long city, not very deep, so the bulk of the development is just off the shore. Five million people live here. Another six million show up in the summertime to escape the heat of Cairo and cities further south. It also rains here, which helps to clean up the streets, which are paved, not dirt.
We started the day at the Fort of Qaitbey, which is believed to be the site of the Great Lighthouse. Well, let's back up a smidge. After a lovely sunrise, the skies turned the most fantastic shade of blue; pure cerulean, not a cloud in sight. The drive to the fort took us right along the shore line and through centuries of architecture. The fort is a bright beige stone that just GLOWED against the blue sky. It was pretty cool in an of itself, but the building and the views out into the harbor and around the whole city were just, well, amazing.
As usual though, it was the people around the site that made it memorable. There were dozens of schoolkids running around the fort, probably on a field trip. They all shouted out hellos to us, and tested their one phrase in English, "what is your name?" The more advanced of the group delved even further with, "where are you from?", "how old are you?", and --yet again -- "are you married?" Like my own attempts at throwing out a phrase or two of a totally foreign language, they did not understand any response beyond yes or no. They all knew the word for camera though. Hams, all of them! Kids are kids are kids, no matter where you go. I got a lot of really cute shots of them all, cuz of course as soon as one kid started to pose they all came a-runnin'.
After the fort, we went to a tomb (the first of many...), this one was the Necropolis of Anfushi, 300 BC or so. Pretty neat stuff, death's not really my thing though. What was intriguing is that we saw that the fine art of trompe l'oeuil, or its current incarnation as "faux finish", is by far not a modern innovation. The folks designing this tomb were a little short on marble and other fine stones, so they just painted the rock they had to look all fancy. What's even more interesting, is that in this particular tomb, the faux finishers were not even the first to come up with that idea: they painted over an even earlier wall pattern lined to look like rectangular slabs of granite.
The National Museum of Alexandria was next. Very well labeled in contrast with the Cairo Museum. Also housed the bust of Akhenaten that I find so striking. I didn't know it was there, so that was a bonus. Bought the catalog.
Again, made friends with the Egyptian schoolchildren outside. (Oh, that's their other stock phrase: "I am Egyptian.") Took a few more photos of the kids posing with some of our people on the tour. One of the girls spoke impeccable English, asked us the usual questions and went on to welcome us to Egypt and wish us a good journey. She asked for my email address, which I responded to with a total blank look cuz I had no idea what she was saying. How often does a 10 year-old Egyptian girl ask for your email address? And she pronounced it, "emmel". I ended up giving it to her once I deciphered the request. It'd be cute if she wrote, my little Egyptian email pal. (Is that creepy?)
My little friend is the older girl in the pink sweater
Lunch was three courses of pure indulgence. Just as I was nearing the unbuttoning point from the main course, out came the dessert cart. Yes, cart. At lunch. There's a patisserie just next door to the restaurant, and they deliver. Profiterol in dark chocolate sauce, holy crap.
The rest of the afternoon was taken up by tomb after tomb after tomb BUT, and this is where I got kinda into it, we made a little side trip, not on the agenda, not advertised to the public, not even open (more paper persuasion) to a tomb that may, according to reputable sources based on logical assumptions, be the proposed tomb of Mr. Alexander the Great himself. It's a phenomonal structure of solid, as in one piece, fine alabaster, located just on the outskirts of an Italian Christian cemetery where some texts indicate he may have been laid to rest.
There is no way to prove the hypothesis right or wrong. The evidence put forth by the proponents of the theory posits that, because of the extremely fine and high quality nature of the material used for the tomb, the fact that the stone was hauled up 900 miles to Alex from the area of Luxor, and the general story about his death and subsequent burial, this is a tomb that most *certainly* housed a person of great stature for all of eternity, and *possibly* could have been the man himself given all the location and other variables. Pretty effin cool, eh? The tomb sits in a little backlot overrun with weeds. No one goes there.
View from the bus: Fishermen walking along the Corniche at sunset
So now, back at the hotel, watching the sun set over the Mediterranean. I love the sound of waves. Missing all of the people I wish could be here to see this, too. I don't get the feeling of the trip flying by, which is good and bad. I was told once I reach "hump day" (halfway point), time will fly. I say, that may be the case usually, but we will be in the Libyan desert at that point, and after three weeks away from home, camping in the sand might be the last thing anyone wants to do. I'm taking bets on who in the group is going to break first.
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