Day 43...I walked like an EGYPTIAN!!!

Day 43, July 27th:

EGYPT Day 1!!!

As I rolled over and turned off my alarm clock, I looked out my window and saw the city of Alexandria before my eyes.  My first impression was that it was a very ugly city.  The seawater changed from the bluest you have ever seen to the muddiest, trash filled water I have ever seen.  The ships surrounding the port are all rundown and disgusting.  The beautiful countryside changed to awesome view of dilapidated buildings full of clothes whipping in the wind while hanging to dry.   Alexandria is definitely not a city of beauty and after only a day in Egypt, I already get a feeling that the entire country is the same way. 

Today, I was planning on roaming and exploring Alexandria.   Danielle, Molly, David and Kylie also wanted to do the same.  All of us are going on the Camel Safari trip, so we spent the day exploring.  We were all finally ready to disembark the ship around 11:00, but we decided to just wait until 11:30 and eat lunch on the ship.  I would much rather play it safe then go eat my first meal off the ship on my first day in Egypt. 

After lunch, the five of us left the ship in search of a taxi to take us to the non-existent lighthouse we saw on the Internet.  The taxi driver told us that he would just be our personal driver for the day for a flat rate of 50 Egyptian Pounds (EP) per person.  ($1=5.65 EP) We decided to take him up on his offer and go explore.  He then walked us to his 1973 Peugeot and took us straight to the Citadel of Qaitbay.  It was pretty neat for only 15 EP.  It was a fort right on the coast and was built in the same spot as the Alexandria Lighthouse, which was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  We climbed to the third floor and looked through all of the little windows at the surrounding views.  The water was crashing upon the bricks along the shore, which produced a very neat spray of water into the air.  The people at the castle were actually all Egyptian minus two Chinese people and the five of us.  As we were leaving, there was a family of Egyptians taking pictures of each other with the cannons.  We asked them if they would take a picture of us and they immediately acted like we were royalty.  They took our picture but then wanted to take pictures with us along with them.  It was so funny.  Our first picture taken by Egyptians progressed into taking about 20 pictures with a local Egyptian family.  The girls were taking pictures with the girls and the guys with the guys.  After all of our pictures, we proceeded back to the taxi to move on to our next destination, the mosques of Alexandria, including the Mosque of Abu El Abbas. 

The taxi took us right to the front door of the mosques, but service was going on so we couldn’t go inside.  We took our pictures and was headed back to the taxi when one of the tourist police motioned us in the other direction.  We thought that maybe we couldn’t go out where we came in, so we followed him.  He just took us around the building to show us three other mosques too, allowed us to take pictures, and then as we turned to go back he demanded a tip.  We didn’t want to give him anything, especially since we all had only bills, but Kylie gave him 1.5 EP.  We then fled quickly back to the taxi.  I guess you can’t even really trust the tourist police!  The ship warned us about this, but when the guy is holding a machine gun it is hard to not follow his directions.  We will definitely try to ignore them for the rest of the trip and not follow them if we know where we are going.  It’s sad that you can’t even trust the tourist police! 

We then got back in the taxi and went to the Alexandria museum.  It was actually a pretty weird museum, but it did show us a lot about the history of Alexandria, as well as many different ancient pieces of art.  For example, there was a rather large vase with a lid that had birds and leaves on it and the sign describing the piece said “large vase with lids with a floral motif and birds.”  How did they know that????  It was so stupid.  All of the signs were like that.  They never told you anything about the history of the piece, just about what it looks like.  We got bored there rather quickly, so we went back to the cab rather quickly.  It only was 20 EP to get in so we were fine with leaving after 30 minutes. It wasn’t very big either, as we did walk around the whole thing. 
The taxi driver then took us to a little restaurant for a coke and then supposedly to a shopping mall; however, it was more like a store full of very expensive souvenirs for tourists.  Anyways, we then asked him to take us by a grocery store before heading back to the ship for the night.