Alexandria

Saturday we were all so happy to be able to sleep in. We awoke to a beautiful view of the Mediterranean and Montazah Palace and gardens. I was glad to have time to enjoy a wonderful and leisurely buffet breakfast. We didn’t take off for sightseeing until 9:00 –a welcome change from the previous several days.

We took a very short drive to the Montazah Palace. King Farouk (the last King of Egypt’s Turkish Dynasty before it changed to a Republic) lived here as did other Kings in the Egyptian dynasty. Now it is used for greeting dignitaries and some other official events.

Following this we visited Alexandria’s catacombs which were discovered by accident in 1900 when a donkey got stuck in a hole. It is believed that it was originally built as a private tomb during Roman times for a family of three and later it was expanded and used as a public cemetery. It was steep decent of 99 stairs (about 30 meters) around a circular shaft to get it and it was actually quite large-not narrow like one thinks of catacombs say in Rome.

We saw the original tomb as well as some the public areas. There was one room where they found all kinds of broken ceramic dishes and cups. This was the area where the mourners gathered, much like we do after a funeral service today. And like today, they shared food and drink after the burial.

Our next stop was what is called Pompey’s Pillar. It is a pillar that is part of the remains of a Roman temple. It is called Pompey’s Pillar because for a long time it was erroneously believed that General Pompey’s head was hung above this pillar after Pompey was defeated by Caesar and fled to Egypt.

We learned that the Egyptians did not build any monuments in Alexandria because they did not want to build near the water. There are Roman and Greek monuments here, but most of them are in very poor shape, some are completely destroyed, including the library which had been the greatest in the ancient worlAfter our sightseeing, we had lunch at a Greek seafood restaurant. The calamari was quite good! The remainder of the afternoon was free. Emily and I took a walk through the gardens and on the beach. She took a very quick swim in the Mediterranean and also in the pool. There was an outdoor chess game by the pool so we attempted to play a game, but ran out of time before dinner to finish it.

Before dinner we did some shopping downtown Alexandria. There are shoe shops galore with really good prices on leather shoes. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything I liked in my size. Egypt was playing in the African cup that evening so there were people gathered in coffee shops awaiting the start. We also saw a lot of people waving or selling Egyptian flags. We found out later that Egypt won 2-0 so they proceed on to, I believe the semi-finals.

We ended our day with dinner at a restaurant that was often frequented by Anwar Sadat. It was on the sea and there was a pool that he also swam in a lot. We returned to our hotel fairly late and are glad that again we get to sleep in tomorrow.