A poorly planned trip to Alexandria

I traveled to Alexandria the Friday after Thanksgiving. I didn't plan the trip very well, I just went down and hopped on the train, and I really did not enjoy it too much. The train ride was nice, and the catacombs were interesting, and dinner at the Fish Market was good. But I had to catch a late train back to Cairo and I ended up tired, impatient, and just ready to get home. And the library was closed for an Islamic holiday, which is the main thing I wanted to see.

I will say that the train ride was inexpensive, comfortable and easy, so I will have to go again. I also enjoyed the moment of getting off the train in Alexandria, a city in a foreign country that I have never been to before, with no idea about where anything was, but just striking out on my own to explore, armed only with my guidebook and a very limited knowledge of Arabic. I felt as if I had finally made it as a world traveler.

Fortunately as I rounded the first corner in Alex I ran into a young lady (Kate) who I saw on the train, and after a brief conversation I saw that she seemed to have a much better plan for seeing the town than I did, so I tagged along with her for the afternoon. She lives in Dubai and works for FIFA, the soccer organization, planning some big upcoming soccer event in Dubai in the very near future. I'm sure my ignorance about soccer was obvious to her, but I got a pass because I'm from the US. She is originally from Australia, but (like everybody I meet here) has lived all over Asia and the Middle East, mostly because of the rotating locations of the big soccer events.

Anyway, our first stop was the Roman theater, which isn't much really. But here are a few pictures:

Then we took a cab to Pompey's pillar. Again, not a lot on this site other than the obvious pillar (which actually has nothing to do with Pompei), but I took a few pictures:

From there we walked to the catacombs. On our way down there, we passed by some of the hides stacked in the street from the Islamic holiday that same day. The holiday remembers Abraham taking his son (Ishmael in the Koran, Isaac in the Old Testament) up the mountain to sacrifice, but then God allowed a lamb to be sacrificed instead. So observant Muslims celebrate this holiday by literally slaughtering a sheep. The picture below is hides stacked in the street from the slaughter. I was reminded of the saying that if we all had to slaughter our own meat there would be a lot more vegetarians.

Anyway, we got past the slaughter and to the catacombs. These were interesting, but I don't know what to write about them--you walk down into the tombs and wander through the passageways. The link above has some nice pictures, and here are some that I took:

From there, we headed over to see this old fort, but it was closed for the holiday, and so was the library. So we went to the Fish Market and had dinner, which was excellent and very inexpensive. From there, Kate took a cab back to the train station for the 7PM train, and I was going to check into my hotel. But it turns out the hotel I reserved was a long way from the area I was in, and I really just wanted to get back to Cairo. So I caught a cab to the train station, hoping to get on the 8PM train. But there were no seats available, so I had to wait on the 10PM train, which left me with 2 hours to kill in the train station. It reminded me of Greyhound bus stations in the US because (1) there wasn't much for food, drink or entertainment available at the station and (2) it wasn't in the nicest part of town. So I was tired, hungry, and bored during my two hour wait for the train ride home. Fortunately, the train was right on time, the ride home was fine and I had my iPod to pass the time. I got to the train station in Cairo around 12:30 AM and caught a cab to Maadi, so I got home about 1AM.