Hello!
On our first trip to Egypt, for some reason, we skipped Alexandria. That was a mistake that I wanted to remedy; SO glad that we have/are! But, first things first. Up this morning about 7 am. I had a hard time getting to sleep last night. When that happens at home, I put on an old Charlie Chan movie, and usually I’m asleep by the time the opening credits are over. This time, though, I had to go through Youtube – and we’re not subscribers! So, COMMERCIALS! UGH! Finally got to sleep around midnight, but definitely could have used a bit more.
I was dreading our first repacking adventure, but truly, when you don’t carry that much, it’s not too difficult to repack! We were showered/tubbed and ready for breakfast before 9 am. Up to the wonderful Executive Lounge for the last time. Sorry to say goodbye, that’s for sure! Our Uber was reserved for 10:30 am, and he was actually early. We piled everything into the trunk and on the road to Alexandria we went.
(A long note here. I had planned on us taking Go-Bus, but the Tripadvisor reviews are pretty poor. When I realized that Uber could get us here, we decided to sign up. It’s about $40 one way, private car, just the two of us. No schlepping luggage on to buses or trains; just a straight shot, door to door. For $40?? We’ll take it! As Robert says, age does grant some privileges – and if we prefer to spend a bit more to be more comfortable, then we should do it! Boy, I love that man!!).
The computer says the transit time is just about 3 hours. We made it in about 2 hours 45 minutes. It was a fascinating drive! R thought we would be driving in Cairo traffic forever, but after about 15 minutes, we shot off onto the Alexandria Desert Road. Much easier driving, although they did have quite a few speed cameras along the way. (As Robert will say, I do have my share of speeding tickets across the globe…I prefer not to comment!).
We passed towns both large and small. Sadat City was interesting, as it seemed to be comprised almost entirely of a “Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility.” It was quite attractive, actually, but HUGE! Don’t really want to wonder about what goes on there. We passed quite a bit of agriculture – grape vines, field upon field of oranges and all sorts of things we couldn’t put a name to. We also had two police checkpoints which looked fairly random to us. (They routinely have the same thing in Turkey, but there, I was driving. Usually all we had to do was say Hello in English and hand them our passports and we were waved through.). The second checkpoint though, actually pulled us over – reason (to us) undisclosed, and our driver, Said, had to get out of the car. Not sure what he did, but we think it cost him on the order of 200 Egyptian Pounds ($6.73 to us). Although neither requested or suggested, we reimbursed him that amount. It was the least we could do for such great driving! Before we even knew it, we were in Alex!
The city itself stretches along the Mediterranean in high rise after high rise. Not sure how many people live here, but I can tell you, it’s a lot! Our hotel, the Hilton Corniche, is right on the highway through town that follows the sea. It’s an older hotel – definitely could use a refurbishment, but it’s got quite a bit of character, and the people are really lovely! We were greeted with “Welcome Home!” on our arrival! I had changed our room assignment with self-check-in and moved us from the 5th floor to the 10th floor. We’ve got a beautiful corner suite, nicely furnished and very comfortable. I love it because it has a nice tub, but only a hand-held shower. Oh well! I’m sure he can manage!
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| Our lovely living room |
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| Bedroom |
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| with balcony overlooking the Med |
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| View from our balcony |
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| Hotel Lobby - with sea! |
We unpacked a bit – not entirely, as we are only here two nights – and then decided to head out to see a sight or two. Time being about 2:30 pm now, we decided to head to the Alexandria National Museum. It does take time to get anywhere here, because of the amount of traffic – and while it’s a tad quieter here than in Cairo, and they actually do have both stop signs and traffic lights, it does take time to get from one side to the other. A note about the traffic lights! Basically, they all count down from some pre-determined number – so as traffic is waiting, they know how long they have to get through the light and make it to the next one. In one instance, the time was something a little over 5 MINUTES until it went red. Incredible; not fun being caught on the wrong side of that light, let me tell you!
The museum is in an old villa in an old part of town. The basement contained all their Pharaonic artifacts, and the ground floor encompassed the Greco-Roman. There was a top floor that covered the later periods – Byzantine, Muslim, modern, but we weren’t really too interested in that.
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| Back of statue has Ramses II cartouche |
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| Menkaure, builder of smallest pyramid at Giza |
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| Pharaoh Hatshepsut |
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| "Heretic" Pharaoh Akhenaten |
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| Beautiful sculpture of Horus |
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| Underwater sphinx from Aboukir |
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| More underwater statuary recovered |
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| Alexander |
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| Emperor Caracalla with Egyptian crown |
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| Emperor Hadrian |
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| Beautiful wooden painted statue of Anubis |
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| In the garden |
The basement had some wonderful things, and the labeling was really quite good. The second floor, though, had a fascinating exhibition of artifacts that had been recovered underwater from Aboukir. In fact, there is a proposal in the works to create the world’s first underwater museum around the site which is thought to be Cleopatra VII’s actual palace, which sunk under the waves thousands of years ago. (And yes, Cleo VII Philopator was “the” Cleopatra of history and legend; the last Queen and ruler of the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty.). What was also nice was that we quite literally had the place to ourselves!
We very much enjoyed the museum, but by that time, we were getting hungry. I hadn’t had much breakfast this morning, and we decided to head back to the hotel and find some dinner. The Greek restaurant, Santorini, was closed tonight … but, fortunately, the Lebanese restaurant was highly recommended and open. Again, we literally had the place to ourselves (although it was only around 5 pm, but that was fine with us!) We sat by the window overlooking the Sea and had a wonderful meal! Only problem, though, was that it was a HUGE meal! I ordered Motaball (the Lebanese equivalent of baba ganoush) with fresh out of the oven – still steaming – pita bread, and R ordered a Turkish spicy dish – cilantro, diced tomatoes and red onion and something else fair to partly spicy! – for his starter. For mains, I had a minced chicken kabob and R had a minced beef kabob … and there were two of them EACH and they were HUGE, as you can tell from the photos! WAY WAY WAY too much for one person to eat! We were told, though, that Lebanese always cook that way – one is supposed to EAT! However … I didn’t get too far, that’s for sure! Absolutely NO room for any dessert, even if we’d wanted to, which, by then, we didn’t. Everything washed down with a glass of good Egyptian red and an excellent Egyptian white wine! Total: The U.S. equivalent of $55. Incredible!
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| Lovely restaurant with a great view! |
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| Our starters |
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| R's beef kabob |
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| My minced chicken kabob ... and Yes, I know, they look alike! |
Then, back upstairs to our lovely (and warm!!!) suite. I do miss our wonderful Conrad Hilton bathrobes, but they’re a long way away. Hoping to make up for lost sleep last night by getting this moving and posting the photos! Big day tomorrow – we’re starting with ancient ruins at 9 am, and then moving on to the Library of Alexandria which doesn’t open until 11. So! More tomorrow!
Lots and love,
m
xxx
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