Day 4 Alexandria

Today we booked a tour of Alexandria…it’s a 2.5 hour drive from Cairo and we left at 7:30. We only had a driver who was pleasant but didn’t speak much English…the plan was to hook up with our guide in Alexandria. 

After a rather tedious drive we met Eslam our guide for Alexandria..we immediately jumped into a best of Alexandria tour which started with the ruins of a 300BC Egyptian-Greek temple..it consisted of a column…2 sphinxes and a pile of rocks which we could have explored if we were willing to scramble around on said pile of rocks. Our survival instincts kicked in and we



declined. 

 When we asked what the activity was we were told we were going to the Roman catacombs where we would have the opportunity to descend steep staircase so we could walk around hunched over  looking at underground tombs…aah…no thanks…let’s move on.

Next up was visiting some lighthouse turned into a fort (yawn)…by this time we realized that there wasn’t that much to see in Alexandria so we asked the guide to take us to a local coffee shop so we could get a sense of local life. Somehow we wound up at the Alexandria Library…another one of the best of Alexandria sights…it was a modern building that was an homage to the ancient one (wtf kinda sight is that)…the guide thought we would enjoy going to the library cafe which looked like it belonged in an airport terminal. At this point we had a heart to heart talk with Eslam our guide and explained that we wanted the type of place he would go himself.

Suddenly magic happened… he took us to the neighborhood where he lived and to the coffee shop on the ground floor of his building. It was run by a lovely young woman who immediately became Ricki’s new best friend, as did the customers in the shop and all the others who came. Over the course of the hour or we shared stories…sipped Turkish coffee and expressions of love and friendship. Ricki was the star of the show and when we left with many hugs and kisses we had a special memory to remember.




Our guide Eslam loosened up after this experience and expressed wonderment that we would enjoy such an experience. He showed us around his neighborhood and completed a really nice experience.








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