Alexander The Great

I know, I know, I have haven't written much about Colombia yet, I'm still waiting for pictures to arrive that will make it easier to describe.

But I did do something out of the ordinary this weekend so I'll write about that... The scenery around Stella Di Mare, where we stay here in Egypt, is getting a little boring so I decided to take a roadtrip to Alexandria with one of the locals here. He travels back there most weekends to the Mediterranean city to see friends and family, as well as partake in the local entertainment such as clubs, restaurants, girls, scenery, and atmosphere. Alexandria is Egypt's second largest city with 3.5-5 million people, depending where you draw the line. And now the Wikipedia version: The city of Alexandria was named after its founder, Alexander the Great, and as the seat of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, quickly became one of the greatest cities of the Hellenistic world — second only to Rome in size and wealth. However, upon the founding of Cairo by Egypt's medieval Islamic rulers, its status as the country's capital ended, and fell into a long decline, which by the late Ottoman period, had seen it reduced to little more than a small fishing village. The city was revived by Muhammad Ali as a part of his early industrialization program. The current city is Egypt's leading port... Here's the full Wiki link.

I rented a car and left after work on Thursday. Alexandria 450 km drive from where I am on the Red Sea, and we had to travel through Cairo to get there. It was my first real driving experience (where I drove) in Egypt, which is an adventure in itself. First rule of driving in Egypt is there are no rules. People honk at random, pass on the inside, go 4 wide in two lanes, lanes mean nothing, drive the wrong way down one ways with their lights off, speed limits are for foreigners, etc etc. Most cars in Egypt have at least 2 dents and all of them need new shocks due to the crap roads. So anyway, driving was fun and we made it through the whole trip with no incidents or new dents.

After leaving work at 12:30 Thursday (we work a half day on Thursdays) we arrived in Alexandria around 6pm. To start off we went to the Bibliotheca (library/museum) that is famous in Alex. It was a good place to start to get a history of the city and get the lay of the land. Here is a picture of it at night:

After that we went for dinner at a place called The Sixties, which is Hisham's (co-worker) local haunt. Then it was off to the Plaza to meet his friends via the seaside motorway that took us past many historical spots as well as modern conveniences. The Plaza is a huge hotel/shopping complex where we looked around and eventually stopped for a coffee and desert. Picture a Starbucks the size of a Denny's restaurant pumping house music and filled with young couples, groups of girls, and groups of guys staring at the girls.

After a bit of oogling we left to find the apartment we rented in a western suburb of Alex, which was near the nightclubs we were planning on going to. A 10 minute drive on a freeway followed by a 15 minutes adventure on narrow streets, dark alleys, and tree-lined side streets led us to our modest 'villa'. It was a two bedroom flat with basically no amenities, but it was cheap and we weren't picky. We promptly opened the bottle of Bacardi and cracked a couple tall-boy Heinekens. This was around 10pm... around 11pm it was decided we'd have nap for an hour to gain some energy for the evening. After that we were up again to put another dent in the rum while we waited for more friends to arrive. When they finally did around 3am we were on our way and eventually left for the nightclub around 4am. There was 7 of us heading out, 3 girls and 4 guys. Bouncers are the same the world around, so after a bit haggling we were in. The club was right on the beach, playing electronic/dance music and was a balance of European and Arabic. There was no "hard drinks" served there, so if we wanted a taste of rum we had to go outside to the car... We danced until the sun rose around 6am... and then it was off to find some "street-meat", however we settled on fuul sandwiches, which was basically some sort of bean paste with onions and tomatoes in a pita. It was surprisingly satisfying... Next it was back to the flat, where we stayed up finishing the remaining booze and smoking hashesh on a carpet outside as the day got brighter and brighter.... Around 10am my Egyptian friends decided we'd better get some rest before hitting beach, so we had another nap until 1pm. Then it was up again, gathering the troops, and heading to a private beach club where we lounged on beanbag chairs and soaked up some sun. I didn't go in the Mediterranean Sea where we were because it was darker than chocolate milk, gross in other words. I'm sure it's nicer on different parts of the coast, but not where we were.

This put us at 4pm on Friday and we had to be back in Sukhna in order to get some sleep before work on Saturday. We left Alexandria about 6:30pm and were back on the Red Sea coast by 11pm...

All-in-all it was a good roadtrip... lots of laughs (even if I didn't understand the joke because they were speaking Arabic), good company, a good change of scenery, some action at the nightclub, and an interesting driving experience. It was a welcome change of pace although I sort of missed golfing... haha.

On another point... The Peck's arrive in Egypt on the 22nd of August... I'll be meeting them in Cairo on the Thursday where we'll spend a couple days doing the Pyramid thing, then I'm joining them for their Nile Cruise from the 25th to 28th. We fly to Luxor, board the boat, then disembark in Aswan and fly back to Cairo. Then they leave for southern Egypt for a diving trip and I go back to work.

This damn work thing, keeps getting in the way of my exploring Egypt and my golfing... oh well.

Maa el salamaa