Alexandria O Al-Iskendariyya

Alexandria Part I --- December 29, 2008

Yesterday was our first day in Egypt. It was a fantastic day, filled with awe and wonder, though sometimes the wonder turned into downright confusion. We started the morning walking along the Corniche, which is a sort of beachfront promenade that extends along much of the Alexandria’s Mediterranean coastline. The weather was perfect and the water gorgeous, a clear teal (and slightly more green-hued from behind my new Italian movie star sunglasses). Being a pedestrian in Alexandria is an exciting experience --- and by exciting I mean in that life-threatening sort of way. There are very few intersections in the city, and even fewer have traffic lights so when you, the chicken, want to cross the road, you must summon up all your courage and wait for a break in the flow of traffic, which because of the few number of intersections and high volume of cars, doesn’t really happen. So you step out cautiously and start weaving your way through four or five or eight lanes of high speed oncoming traffic. (More on that later --- it's left a big impression on me.)

Alexandria Part II --- Tuesday, December 30, 2008

It’s 9:30 in the morning and all is well after several cups of coffee and a fortifying breakfast from the smorgasbord offering at the elegant Cecil Hotel. It’s a buffet set up and your choices include fresh squeezed juices (orange, strawberry, honeydew, lime, watermelon), cheeses and meats (you know, like in German-speaking countries), German-style sausages, kofta, hummus, more hummus, croissants, cream-filled pastries, 14 other types of pastries, at least, crepes and their condiments, omelettes made to order, several varieties of fruit salad, more fruit, yogurt, cereals, potato-cheese ball things, falafel-y type things, and sweeping views of the Mediterranean sea. Not a bad way to start the day.

Tim and Katy are off to the search for the catacombs for an hour or two and I am staying here at the hotel to write a bit. It’s a hotel with a bit of a literary history itself: Lawrence Durrell, author of Alexandria Quartet, took a room here in 1942. Winston Churchill stayed here, and during the British occupation of Egypt, the British Secret Service operated out of a suite on the first floor here. It’s an elegant place built in the 1930s, and our rooms have good views of the Corniche and the Eastern Harbor. And did I mention the breakfast? Delightful and fortifying.

And as for the sightseeing: we arrived in the wee hours of Sunday the 28^th, and after getting through the airport with remarkable ease and fluidity we took a slightly nerve-wracking taxi ride to our hotel. Three-quarter’s of a night’s sleep later, we arose, breakfasted, and set out in search of exhibits of the glorious past. We made our way to the Graeco-Roman museum, which Lonely Planet bills as “dusty but wonderful.” We found the building which we believed to be the museum (it lacked a sign, so we had to use our circumstantial evidence skills --- it appeared to be of Graeco-Roman architectural style, unlike its neighbors, it had what appeared to be a ticket office, and they were hauling out what appeared to be museum cases). We walked around the building a couple times looking for what might be an (open) entrance or place to purchase tickets, but were forced to deduce that it was closed today for renovation or moving of museum cases or something. Anyway, from the outside it did appear to be “dusty but wonderful” and we, undaunted, set out in search of the Alexandria National Museum.

Here we did indeed find a wonderful museum, inside of an old Italianate villa that had been museum-fied. We started in the basement, the Pharonic Age, and saw a host of artifacts from this period in Egypt (about 3100 BC – 332 BC). We saw some great stone representations, for example, of the lioness goddess Sekhmet, of the Eye of Re, of Thutmose I and II and III (standing, kneeling, sphinx, respectively) and Queen Hatshepsut. And we moved over to another room and saw Cleopatra VII (the very one who Shakespeare wrote about!) and then up a flight of stairs was an exhibition on the current underwater archaeological digs currently going on near Alexandria. (The Alexandria of yore is largely underwater; so even though it’s an ancient city, most of the buildings here today are relatively recent.)

From the museum we wondered along the bustling Tariq al-Horreyya, past the university and over to Sharia Fuad to lunch at the Coffee Roastery, a western-style café frequented by students and youthful Alexandrians. Sufficiently fueled up, we braced ourselves for the kamikaze crossing of the streets and made our way to the Kom al-Dikka (Mound of Rubble), a Roman amphitheater discovered just recently when the area was being dug up to put in a new apartment building. The theater somehow was marvelously preserved under all that dirt for all those years, and after paying admission you’re free to walk right into the ruins and take a seat on any of the 13 white marble terraces that form a semi circle around the main stage area. They’ve also discovered colorful mosaics and the remains of Roman baths, and they are still at work excavating the rest (in fact, we saw the end of a column stuck under dirt that they are in the process of extricating.) Dozens of stray cats roam the grounds (and one well-fed one tried rather successfully to befriend Katy, who’s heartstrings were still being tugged by a tiny stray sickly-looking kitty that gave her a pitiful look on the way in). Anyway, the amphitheater was very cool, and there were neat patterns, amazingly well-preserved, carved into some of the surrounding walls (photos to come).

From the amphitheater we hiked along the Corniche all the way out to the western edge of the Eastern Harbor, out on a dock near Fort Qaitbey. The location was once the site of a tower-turned-lighthouse first built in 283BC (and later added to) at the behest of Ptolemy I. It stood for 17 centuries before being destroyed by an earthquake. Anyway, we didn’t actually go up to the fort, but walked along the harbor and back to have dinner at the Fish Market. It sits right on the water, on a jetty or on a dock (it was dark and we weren’t sure which) and seemed to be exceedingly popular with locals. While we were waiting for a table downstairs, we started chatting with a guy also waiting, a second year med student in the U.S. backpacking through Egypt solo on his winter break, and he joined us for dinner. We were all sort of confused by the ordering process, but eventually learned that you go up to a fish bar and point at what you want (grouper for Tim and me, shrimp for Katy, and sea bass for the med student) and then they ask how you want it prepared (grilled, fried) and bring it to you like that at the table, head and tail and all. It was very good and very very fresh and we got some good tips from our company (take a taxi to the catacombs, he suggested, rather than walking through the slums). Gelato on the way home and turned in fairly early after a full day.

Merry Christmas to All --- and to All a Good Night

Merry Christmas from Bahrain, where it's now the morning after. Tim and Katy and I enjoyed a host of jolly festivities with friends from work and their HASH group (Drinkers with a Running Problem; it's largely a British thing). On Christmas Eve, we went to a potluck hosted by their friends Kelly and Pete (a bi-Atlantic newlywed couple) at the British embassy, where Pete works and they both live. A jolly occasion to which we contributed a Sunset magazine-inspired artichoke Parmesan stuffing and also a blue cheese cranberry bruschetta, or at least what we were able to salvage from the recipe after we (okay, I) over olive-oil-ized the sourdough crustini things (we didn't have the requisite brush needed to spread the olive oil, so I ended up sort of dipping both sides, and then as time grew short, hastily submerging --- not really a good idea). But we were fashionably late, or perhaps even later than that (trend-settingly late? designerly late?) and so people were many drinks ahead and complimented us on the cookies. I'm not sure if we brought cookies but that's okay.

The party was fun, except for the moment of panic when I was locked in the bathroom because the door has a handle on only one side, which is, incidentally, not on the side you pull to get out of the room with. So if you, the uninitiated, have pushed the outer door closed behind you when entering, you are faced with the daunting task of pulling open a door with no handle on your way out. I began inspecting the door for where it might not be flush against the wall (or it it "flesh"?) and miraculously was able to use my nails to catch an edge of the door with the right angle and enough leverage to pry it open a bit. I figured Tim or Katy would have come looking for me at some point but glad to have not spent much longer in there. Anyway, Katy and I shot a reenactment of this scene later in the evening, when Tim announced it was time to head out. Photos to come.

On Christmas morning, we joined Kelly and Pete (see above) and her visiting parents at the Gulf Hotel for a holiday brunch. We arrived a bit early this time, mostly out of confusion (the tickets don't generally list the time of the event here) and we were greeted by a red and green and gold lavishly decorated ballroom, with big round tables and white linens, and also greeted by the song "Bohemian Rhapsody." A sort of tragic song for a festive occasion, and it was followed by some other similarly ill-suiting ones ("Guilty feet have got no rhythm" and so forth) and then our friends arrived and we took our places at table # 17, which happened to be the closest to the stage. So we were right there with the Filipino carolers --- who sang in rounds and were very very good --- and a sultry singer who sang Sinatra, and then the eerily masked Santa who came out toward the end carrying a bag of wrapped boxes --- whom the children then mobbed until he was so disoriented that he began swinging his right fist in a circle over his head (video to come).

And then that evening it was MORE food, this time at the home of Nate and Kristen, married naval officers. They've been here in Bahrain (known as "the Land of Not-Quite-Right" -- see P2 and P3 above) for a year and hosted a wonderful dinner for a dozen or so. We all squeezed around the main dining table which was especially pleasing to me, who would have been the first in line regulated to the kiddie table using the age-old juniority method. Kristen is from the South and an amazing cook and has the organizational skills to pull it all off beautifully. Nate is the region's spokesman for the Navy and a Very Good Eater and also saw to it that everyone had a beverage in hand at all times. He, a Midwest native, also gave his card and offered to provide Prairie Home with any material it might want. People of great service, Kristen and Nate, and really fun, too. In fact, tonight Katy and Kristen are organizing an exchange in which their husbands are sent to one house to watch football so that we three can have a Sarah Jessica Parker tribute marathon. After a run, stop at the base, and visit to the souq, that is.


Tomorrow Tim and Katy and I leave for Alexandria, Egypt.