Walk Like an Egyptian

Holy cow! I’ve been to Egypt… this has been absolutely amazing! We arrived in Alexandria on Tuesday morning and I had a SAS tour that took us to the Alexandria catacombs and other places of interest. The catacombs were amazing, and much different than the ones I had gone to in Rome. It was like the hall of a building, with separate rooms for family tombs, and a huge spiraling staircase that went down three floors below the surface… two of which are completely under water. We then went to the El Montazah Palace, Qaitbay's Citadel, and a huge mosque. We ate dinner on the ship and I went to bed early to rest up for the next day.
On day 2 in Egypt I had another SAS trip, Pyramids and Jeep safari… it was the best SAS trip I’ve done so far! On the three hour bus ride to Cairo, our tour guide covered Egyptian history basically from its beginning to the present… she has her PhD in Egyptology and is a professor during the academic year and a tour guide during the summer… she really knew her stuff! Anyways, we arrived at the Pyramids at about 10:30 and got to spend a lot of time wandering around. It was amazing to finally be there, best moment ever! We then drove down to the Sphinx and again got to wander around and see all three of the Pyramids at a distance. It was AMAZING! I have no other words to describe it. After that, we went to lunch at a snazzy country club, then headed over to the Pyramid of Djoser, or the Stepped Pyramid, which is the first pyramid ever, designed by Imhotep – you know the bad guy in The Mummy movies, yeah the bald dude in the loin cloth, in real life he was an architect, like the first ever recorded or something, yeah not a crazy priest dude – anyways it was really pretty fantastic to be standing in front of this truly ancient building. They were doing restoration on it so there was scaffolding all around, which is pretty distracting, but it was still and awesome thing to see. We then went back to the country club where we ate lunch, and got into ten different 4x4 Jeeps. The drivers took us way into the desert, up and down sand dunes, and by some other smaller pyramids… it was insane! Our driver must have been fueled by our screams and laughter because he just kept on driving faster and up and down steeper dunes, ha ha it still makes me laugh now just thinking about it! After half an hour of that, we met our up with our camels and their drivers. It was crazy and almost laughable to think, “hey I’m on a camel in Egypt and those things in the distance are legit 4,000+ year old pyramids.” Well anyways, I named my camel Fernando and have a lovely video of me doing so! After another half an hour of this, we said goodbye to our new camel friends and got back on the bus for another 3-hour drive (nap) back to Alexandria.
On Thursday, my friend Stephanie and I hung around on the ship for the better part of the day, trying to catch up on homework in preparation for midterms and final projects/ papers… we only have eight or so days of class left! In the afternoon we ventured out to the Library of Alexandria by taxi… a taxi ride in Alexandria is an experience in itself. It’s like The Fast and the Furious in real life… absolutely nuts! If there are three painted lanes, they somehow create five lanes of traffic, and completely neglect to use any type of signaling whatsoever. Well I shouldn’t say that because everyone, EVERYONE, honks… why are they honking? I have no idea, they must feel like it makes traffic go faster, but how could they go faster when they’re going 100 mph in the first place… well that’s just an estimate because the speedometers don’t actually work. And while this is all happening people are embarking on the suicide mission known as crossing the street, or are hailing taxis that then stop in the middle of the road. It’s insanity, but I have yet to see an accident! One thing I can’t stand though is how none of the taxi drivers use the meter thing, so you have to bargain the price with them before you get into the car, and most of the time we don’t know how far the place we want to go is, so it’s rather difficult to negotiate a price. I digress… the Library is really beautiful, very modern and fancy and has a great antiquities collection and some modern art. We met back up with our taxi driver, Jamey, oh yeah, the wait for you at places so they get more money from you. He took us back to the ship where we again hung around.
Friday was kind of depressing, because about six were trying to go organize a day trip to Luxor, which is pretty far south. It all ended up falling apart in the end, and I used up the last of my Internet time  so on Friday we didn’t really do much. Alexandria is a wonderful city, but one that can really be done in a day or two… especially when your on a tour, so on Friday we went to a mall for a while just to get out of the heat. Eight of us squeezed into a Station Wagon sized taxi, and I mean squeezed. We spent most of the day there, walking around, drinking coffee and people watching. It was pretty amazing/ confusing to see these women completely covered from head to toe looking at all these different clothing items like tank tops, skirts, and heels. I wonder when they could wear such clothing, I mean who knows, they could be wearing it under their long skirts and veils for all we know. I just thought that it was strange, well not strange but interesting. I think that while we were in the mall, my friends Stephanie, Vanessa, and I were the only blond people in the whole building, and we definitely felt like we stood out. I’m sure that people really noticed the group of us walking around, especially since we had 7 girls and 1 guy, and were speaking English. I don’t think I’ve felt more like a foreigner than when I was in Egypt. I felt almost naked when we were walking amongst these people so completely covered, and we were dressed pretty conservative ourselves! It’s just a very different feeling. Not really uncomfortable, but different. Well, anyways, we went back to the ship that night, and on Saturday we tried, TRIED, to go to an authentic restaurant that Lindsey had found in her guidebook. So we went out to flag a taxi and told him the name and address of the restaurant. The next two hours were a hilarious struggle to find said restaurant or anything really… our driver probably had no idea what we were saying, but kept stopping at these random places. Eventually we decided to tell him to drop us at the Bazaar and we would try to find a place to eat, but did he take us to the Bazaar? No. Instead he took us to this fancy, expensive store that gives taxi drivers commission for bringing their clients there. Ugh, we were so frustrated and sick of the heat that we decided to return to the ship. The Explorer left a few hours later, and I said goodbye to Egypt, for the time being. I really must return there, I need to see everything south and around Cairo! Who wants to come with me?!
So we’ll be in Casablanca, Morocco on Saturday, our last port! It’s absolutely insane that we have less than three weeks left of this trip! I mean I start classes in Boulder in exactly three weeks from today! Insane!

LOVE LOVE LOVE