Alexandria

 We drove  2 1/2 hours straight north of Cairo to Alexandria on the Mediterranean Sea for a weekend getaway. Our friend's brother-in-law reserved a hotel room for us right next to the water. Between the long line of apartments and hotels and the Corniche (the strip of beach) is a 6 lane highway. Here is our view of the water, the beach, and this highway:

Happy on our balcony.

 The desk in our room.

Alexandria has a population of 4 million people, so it is a bustling place. The Egyptians love to spend holidays here, especially in the summer, so there are hotels galore, restaurants, cafes, shops ...

Alexandria is also a favourite destination for weddings. As we returned to our hotel we saw 2 wedding parties complete with party frocks, drummers, and musicians. Shop windows are full of wedding related items. Here is the window display of a wedding cake store that caught our eye:

Of course, Alexandria has a long, long, long history. We only had time to browse one National Museum which turned out to be a real treasure with artifacts beautifully displayed stretching from the pharoahs, through Roman and Greek take overs, and finally those from the many other countries that have all conquered Egypt for periods of time - French, English, Turks...

We strolled through Montaza, an expansive park which was once the grounds of deposed (late) King Farouk's Summer palace.

We saw this mystery tree. Does anyone know what it is?

Even in this beautiful place, there was graffiti...

We took time to get to know this more manageably sized city by wandering around. The most fun was strolling up and down a shopping area called Al Rami. We saw shop after shop of bags, shoes, cell phones and cell phone accessories, video games, toys, and clothes.

 Even the cats like to shop.

Egyptians are crazy about anything with English letters - whether they make sense or not.

For lunch, it was recommended that we eat Egyptian food of foul (beans with onions and spices) Egyptian pita (so fluffy and so good), hummus, spicy eggplant, falafels, potato salad, and tahini.

 This is our mezze.



You always know that you are strolling in an Islamic country because the numerous mosques have loud speakers delivering the call to prayer 5 times a day. Here is what this sounded like as we walked in downtown Alexandria.

We stopped for a Turkish coffee (of course!) at an intersection near a new, gorgeous library (to visit on our next Alexandria trip), with a view across the water of the famous Fort Qaitbey, built in the medieval period to protect the city (also to be visited on a future trip). Take a look at our 'quiet' coffee perch:

As we were leaving Alexandria we spotted this street light painter, strolling through traffic with his ladder and bucket.

Clearly we fell in love with Alexandria and we look forward to many more agazas (weekends) there.