Alexandria

After the desert, we were off to Alexandria. Quite a bit of a change from the small desert towns. We stayed at a cute little boutique hotel right on the water.

It was a lot colder in Alexandria, and I remember feeling chilly there and wearing our jackets the whole time. The people also seemed much more modern, and we saw more of men/women holding hands or being affectionate in public. There was even REAL coffee in this city, and quite good I might add... we had amazing lattes at a cafe called Cilantro.

There was a lot of "modern" shops everywhere, and even little alchohol shops where you could buy beer and wine easily. I did make an obvious mistake of asking the guy at the wine shop which wine he thought I should get (a typical question in America) - he glared at me for a second and then told me the one "which most foreigners buy". Oops. Didn't mean to imply that he might drink. Oh well, I just smiled and bought 2 bottles. =)

The 2nd day we were there we headed off with just the 4 of us (Matt & Me, and Matt & Stacey). We saw the Catacombs - underground tombs in Alexandria that were discovered not that long ago (in the last 50 years?) by a donkey falling through the street into some of them. Bummer for the donkey. It was really cool to see these though, they definitley had more of a Roman feel to them compared to the Valley of the Kings down south.

We also saw the Citadel (the castle looking building in the pictures below). There were a ton of locals and school kids with teachers there as well checking it out. The school kids were very amused by us, and all wanted pictures with us on their cell phones. It was pretty funny, although after a while it did seem a tad odd. Haha. We tried to be good sports though.

We also took a long walk back from the Citadel around the harbour, even saw some local fishermen bringing in the days catch which was cool to see. We ended the afternoon seeing the Library, it is really modern and new.

Overall Alexandria was beautiful. We had some cheap seafood, enjoyed the nice city, and a wonderful last dinner out with our whole Intrepid group.

View from our Hotel room

Seafood and Beer, another change from the desert

enjoying some sheesha, apple flavor of course.

Catacombs

The Citadel

There were tons of local school kids touring around with their teachers here, and they all wanted their pictures with us. The teachers even took the pictures for them. It was pretty amusing to us... at least at first.