Alexandria, Egypt

So, how do you top the pyramids we saw the day before outside Cairo?  Well, you don't really, however, we still had a great time exploring Alexandria before our ship left Egypt.  We played this one a bit more by ear simply by walking off the ship and negotiating with multiple taxi drivers to take us around town.

Negotiating with your average Egyptian is really an experience itself.  Right outside the customs office near the ship are a bunch of market stalls operated by the most persistent salespeople I have ever met.  They won't exactly grab your arm and pull you into their shop, but they will not stop calling after you.  Turning your head and making eye contact is the kiss of death if you don't want to buy because then they will REALLY come after you!  If you ARE looking to buy, they will NOT stop offering you whatever they have until you buy something.  Oh, you want a red shirt?  How about this one?  Or this one?  No?  Well, the guy in the stall next door is my cousin (ha!) and he may have it.  Ah, yes, this is $20 (near the ship and in many places in town they will negotiate in dollars and euros).  What?!  I can't give this to you for $10?!  $15?!  You're cutting my hands off!  Ok, throw in the cheesy coffee mug and I'll take it at $17.

Anyway, we found a good driver that took us here first:

The Fortress of Salah ad-Din (the same guy featured in the movie "Kingdom of Heaven")

Entrance of this seaside fortress.  Very impressive, though we didn't go in because there were other things we wanted to see and we were kind of cheaping it out a bit.  

Our driver also thought he would show us a very impressive collection of mosques all clustered together:

Agnes was allowed in the women's entrance if she took her shoes off and we paid a small fee (like $1 or $2)

When they found out I had like no money on me (I was hiding it), they did NOT offer to take me to the men's entrance.  Oh well, we got the pictures and this wasn't really what we came here for anyway...

THIS is what we came here for: wall-to-wall traffic!  Not really, but that's what you get here in Egypt..

After the mosque, we really wanted to see the library at Alexandria, which is probably the most popular thing for people (not just foreigners) to do there.

The original library at Alexandria, the largest and greatest library in  the world  at one time, was sadly destroyed by a fire fire possibly set by Julius Caesar more than 2000 years ago.  No one knows for sure, especially since the ruins of that library sit under some very murky and polluted waters out in the harbor now. 

The new library, completed not many years ago, was built at a cost of approximately $220 million.

Just a ton of people here, including a lot of school children coming in buses.

Inside the library at Alexandria

I actually wanted to see the "relics" of Anwar Sadat, including the uniform he was wearing when he was assassinated in the early 1980's, but we couldn't find the exhibit in this huge place!

Thought we would do some shopping since this place has stores just everywhere...

...right on the street

....in alleyways

Wherever!  And they sell everything.  I was thinking of posting the pictures of the open air butcher shop, but on close examination, those photos were pretty gory.  Needless to say, the USDA would just outright condemn a fair portion of the city if they had jurisdiction here.

Before we went shopping, however, it would be necessary for our cab driver to get in a very violent and heated argument with another motorist.  Apparently, this other guy had been tailgating our cab and honking his horn incessantly and this was really getting on our driver's nerves bad.  So, he stops the cab, gets out of the car and starts yelling at the guy behind him.  Who also gets out of his car.  And right in the face of our driver. For a couple minutes there at least it was touch and go whether they were going to come to blows, but thankfully some passerby managed to unlock these two from their altercation and return our driver to us.  Did I mention how bad traffic was there?

Our driver really felt bad about the whole thing and after finding a place for his car he took us down some alleyways that Agnes said she sure never would have gone down by herself.  Wall to wall shops wherever they could find room, so it was good to have a driver that knew a couple places that might have something we were looking for.  After looking around a bit, though, we decided we had had enough of Egypt and it was time to go back to the ship.  When we got there, this is what we found on the bed:

Agnes thought this thing looked like a pig, but to  me it seemed more like a dog.  They actually had a class onboard that teaches you how to fold towels like this, should you ever want to for some reason.