Alexandria, done the right way...

Roman Amphitheater

The Pillar of Pompey


The New Library of Alexandria

Prior to arriving in Cairo, my friend and I had concocted a remarkably ambitious plan for our third day that would have us taking a 9 hour night train to Luxor, seeing everything in approximately 12 hours and then taking a ride across the desert to Hurghada to catch our flight the following afternoon. Heat, exhaustion and the realities of Egypt all collided to persuade to us to reconsider. Instead, we happily accepted the suggestion of Mohammed, the night manager at our hostel and now, our travel coordinator and opted to do a much more civilized 2-3 hour day trip to the ancient capital city of Alexandria. The day started off as was now the norm. Tusin, our driver dropped us off at an ancient Roman ampitheater, we bought the tickets and then lacking a tour group to shadow, found some Americans with a Lonely Planet guidebook we could borrow to try to discern what we were looking at, all the while avoiding the tourist police and their demands for backsheesh. Ditto for the excavations at the Pillar of Pompey (minus the guidebook, here it was a Spanish guide who I cornered as soon his customers had wandered off for some photos). By the time we had gotten to our third stop, the Catacombs of Kom el-Shuqafa, we finally got wise. It was here that we were approached by an English-speaking tour gude. We understood him, he understood us, he seemed very well-informed and passionate about Egyptian history, in other words, he was a keeper...we launched into some negotiations and after seeing him bring the history of the catacombs to life, we hired him for the remainder of the day. At the catacombs, he methodically pointed out symbols adorning the main tomb which reflected Egyptian beliefs, Greek beliefs and even some cleverly concealed Christian beliefs. Instead of being contradictory, he explained that at this time of religious upheaval, when so many different faiths were being promoted, people would sometimes take a shotgun approach. You throw in a little bit of this, a little bit of that and regardless of who is right, in the end, you are covered. Call it the "just in case" approach.

Next he took us to the site where the world's greatest library once stood.The Library of Alexandria, which may have housed as many as a million scrolls and is believed to have been burned down at least four times (once by Julius Caesar himself). It was once said to be the center of all learning in the ancient world. As of 2003, there is a new library which attempts to recapture the spirit of global learning while commemorating the spot where the original once stood. It was here that we visited a small museum of antiquities, housing finds from around the Alexandria area. This was also the spot where our guide informed us that if we had anything laminated with a picture on it, it would pass for a student id and get us half off on the admission price. We tried it with our work id's and all of a sudden, instead of the feeling like we were being ripped off (a feeling that had become common in Egypt), we were now the scammers. Normally, I would fret and feel guilty about this, ripping off a cultural institution and all that, but in this instance, it felt wildly refreshing. We repeated our trick at the Graeco-Roman Museum of Alexandria, where our guide showed us artifacts reflecting the chronological shift from the Pharonic period to the Greek period, followed by the Christians and finally the Muslims. My favorite item on display was a chalice commemorating a battle where Christians and Muslims fought side-by-side. It featured a crescent with a cross inside, revealing a unity and open-mindedness which sadly seems to be lacking today. We finished off the tour with a visit to the coptic church of St. Mark's, which, according to the priest present, houses the Saint's head (the body having been absconded to the better known St. Mark's Basilica in Venice) and finally to St. Catherine's church, which we were told was the largest Roman Catholic church in the Middle East. Four hours into meeting our guide, we had criss-crossed Alexandria, and more importantly, we knew exactly what we had been looking at and had learned loads. It made us wish we had met him two earlier and had him show us around Cairo. Just think of all the Egyptian Pounds his id trick could have saved on entrance tickets alone....