Alexandria!!

So after my last post in Alexandria I thought I should make some nice statements about it :) I had a lovely time there, a nice day with the group and then a whole day of exploring by myself.

Alexandria is the second largest city in Egypt, although it’s much much smaller than Cairo. I think there’s about 5 million people in comparison to Cairo’s 15.2 million (according to Wikipedia, but rumors have it that it’s much larger, ~20 mil). It still feels like a big city, and I still got hassled a lot (per my last post), but it had a much more relaxed feeling. I did almost get hit by a car, though. That was pretty scary.

The pictures will probably explain more by themselves:

The first day we were there it was calm and beautiful. The second day it was very windy and it rained for a while (I caught a taxi during that!) but this was the waves on the normally very still Sea. I got soaked with the crazy waves hitting the shore. Course everyone else got out of the way when it splashed.... I'm just weird I guess.









This was a Brazilian coffee shop I spent some time doing homework at. YES, I know, crazy that I have homework to do over here. Seems like I should just be able to run around and explore, but I guess I don't really consider reading about Islam that difficult of homework. ;) Oh you can see me just to the right of the tip of the pyramid, between that and the guy standing up in yellow.

Alexandria is trying really hard to place itself back on the world map, and the recently built $220 million dollar library is an example of it. It’s really neat and this is a kinda random glowing blue sphere by it. It also has a huge wall with a letter from every known alphabet. That was fun to see.

Alexandria has been referred to as the city with the most history but the least to show. There’s almost nothing left to see of the ancient glory Roman and Greek days the harbor once had, but they are starting to recover things from under the water. It’s called nautical archaeology. I saw some of it at the Alexandria National Museum, which was really neat. I saw a mummy too. Haha, I guess I don’t feel so much like a tourist anymore, because the museum was packed with Chinese and Australian tourists, and I think I looked at them a little strange. At least I didn’t identify with them. :) These are pictures of the statues underwater where they found them.




This is me next to a mummy. Sweet.













These girls really wanted to talk to me and then have their picture taken. They were sweet. It's easy to put a label on all the women wearing the hegab and forget that they're just people like we are, just young girls in middle school laughing at the stupid foreign looking people.









This is the view from the hostel we stayed at, you can see the Mediterranean Sea from our porch. It was only $3.25 for the night, but it was pretty icky! It was called "Acropole Hotel", but we called it "A crap hole"......

Here we’re hiding where the books in the library I mention in a few pictures used to be kept. (Todd, me, and Justin)

This is the harbor with all the boats in it. We're in a fort that was built... a long time ago.













A sweet massive granite column, Pompey’s Pillar, from an original temple dated a long, long time ago. We also went underground where one of the first known libraries was. It was also sweet.















Well that's it for now I guess... I'm a few days behind and don't have time to show you the awesome mosques we went to and the ridiculously sweet horseback riding I did today in the desert. More to come soon, I promise... Love you all!