Alexandria

9th December 2009 (Wed)

Today we are travelling away from Cairo to Alexandria!

Alexandria is Egypt's second largest city (3.5 million people), its largest seaport and the country's window onto the Mediterranean Sea. The city was founded by Alexander the Great in 331BC and has witnessed many historical events and legends.

Travelling time from Cairo to Alexandria is 3 hours! long long bus ride.. but going there we have a rest stop.. and at one of the shop there i spotted this:

Yoda!!
So cute!! :p

At this rest stop we still had 1.5 hrs of travelling.. continue sleeping throughout the rest of the journey..

And finally we have reached! Gateway to Alexandria!

And the feeling of Alexandria is totally different from Cairo! It has a Mediterranean atmosphere. Totally didn't feel like i'm in Egypt! There's so much more greenary here and the buildings are colorful! (Not like in Cairo where it is regulated that buildings can only be of certain colors)

No wonder Egyptians wld travel here for their holidays and to relax!

First stop: Montazah Palace Gardens

This area used to belong to the Mohamed Ali family. The construction of the area started in 1892 by King Abbas II, who built a large palace inside the complex called the Salamlek. In 1932 King Farouk built a larger palace and called it the Haramlik. Montazah Palace was the last residence for King Farouk I before he abdicated in 1952. As a former royal summer residence, the palace is now partly a museum (mementos of the monarchy) and the rest of the area is occupied by beautiful gardens.

The Palace is close to the public but the surrounding gardens in the complex are open to the public for a small fee. Top right photo is the pretty entrance to the park.

Bridge built by King Farouk I (if i'm not wrong :p) But the view was awesome!!

Building on the right is the palace as mentioned above!

The Palace mixes Turkish and Florentine architecture.. pretty pretty!

It is off-limits to the public because it is still being used as an official building by Egypt's president. Guests of the presidents still stays in this palace!

So i guess the small fee to enter the park is for a reason! So that not any tom, dick or harry can enter the park.. :p

We walked along this path to continue to enjoy the view and take photos..

While walking towards the coach to travel out of the park, two of the kids in the group asked the tour guide if they could stop at any Mcdonalds nearby.. turn out there's a Mcdonalds in the park! haha at first the main purpose was to allow the few kids in the tour group to buy some burgers to eat on the bus.. but who knows.. the whole tour group emptied the bus and we filled the whole Mcdonalds!! haaha.. guess everyone is a kid within :p

And so the supposedly short stop-over at Mcdonalds became a much longer stop :p The stop-over was long enough for us to share and finish a meal!

It was quite funny.. cause i think this particular Mcdonalds has not seen such a crowd in ages!! They had to call their back-up staff resting behind to come help out! loll guess we made their day and they can close shop for the rest of the day :p

That's our whole tour group filling the whole Mcdonalds!

Meal shared between me and my parents: Spicy Chicken Fillet!
And their fries taste different from those in Singapore!

After our mini but fulfilling break, off we go to our next destination!

Travelling along the streets of Alexandria..

Electric trams and donkeys are commonly seen...

Colorful buildings..

And we reach our first destination.. but too bad its another place where no photography is allowed.. Just managed to take the entrance of the place before leaving my camera on the bus..

But the place we visited is the Catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqafa! The tombs here constitute the largest Roman-period funerary complex in Egypt and dates back from the 2nd century AD. The entire catacomb is underground and it was discovered when a donkey fell through the earth into the catacombs.

"Dug into the rock to a depth of about 35m, the catacombs are set out on three different levels. However, flooding has made the lowest level inaccessible. The first level is reached by a wide circular staircase lit by a central well, down which the bodies were lowered by ropes. From the vestibule you enter the rotunda, with a well in its centre, upon which eight pillars support a domed roof. At the first level to the left is the banquet hall, where relatives of the deceased gathered to pay their last respects and feast.
To the east of the rotunda is the Caracalla Hall, an older burial complex that
became accessible from the main chamber when tomb robbers broke through the wall.
From the rotunda, a small staircase descends to the second level with a vestibule and burial chamber. Here the decorated sarcophagi and wall reliefs display a mixture of Egyptian, Roman and Greek styles: by the doorway, Anubis, the god of the dead, is shown as a Roman legionary with a dragon’s tail. On either side of the burial chamber, below heads of Medusa, are carved two giant serpents, wearing the double crown of Egypt. From the burial chambers, passages lead off in all directions to rooms containing more than 300 loculi – small chambers for bodies."

As the floors of the burial chambers were still slightly flooded, we had to walk on planks around the burial chamber. At least there wasn't any bodies in the chambers.. Quite an eye-opener!

We then emerge from underground and back on land to continue our travel around Alexandria.. yet another view of the streets of Alexandria!

Just a short ride from the catacombs is the Pompey's Pillar!

Made of red Aswan granite, the 27m high pillar was erected around AD297 in tribute to the Roman emperor Diocletian. On its base is written in Greek "To the most just of emperors, the divine protector of Alexandria, Diocletian the invincible: Postumus, prefect of Egypt." At its base are two pink granite sphinxes of the Ptolemaic period.

This place was once the city’s acropolis, and here also stood the Temple of Serapis, a Graeco-Egyptian God invented by the Ptolemies. However, the temple was destroyed by a Christian mob in AD391, and is all that remains of the temple.

More travelling.. but more like through the city center this time round.. :p

And finally we reach Fort Qaitbey.

The fort was built in the 1480s by Sultan Qaitbey on the site of the Pharos Lighthouse, using fragments of the six times taller Pharos lighthouse, which had been destroyed by earthquakes in 1303 and in 1323.

Fort Qaitbey:

Artist Impression of the Pharos Lighthouse:

Renowned as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Pharos Lighthouse (up to 150m high) could by means of a mirror, direct a beam of sunlight, or the light of a fire, far out to the sea.

"Built mainly of limestone to the design of the Asiatic Greek architecture Sostratus, the lighthouse had three differently-shaped storeys. The base was square and used as lodgings for mechanics and for storing fuel. The second storey was octagonal and the third, which contained the lantern mechanism, was circular and topped with a huge bronze statue of Poseidon, god of the sea."

Didn't know there was a replica of the Lighthouse of Alexandria was constructed in the Window of the World at the Cultural Park in Shenzhen, China.. else i would have checked it out when i visited it.. but i think the picture below is the replica:

View from a place near Fort Qaitbey:

After that it was lunch! Could be due to the fact that we had Mcdonalds much earlier so lunch was only at 2+..

Stuck in traffic while travelling to the lunch place.. but it was during this time where i fully decipher the whole series of arabic numbers! :D

Arabic numerals!

The place we had lunch:

By then, the food was almost the same fare each meal so i guess we ate quite fast. In the end, we couldn't find the driver of the coach and we ended up waiting along the streets of the road cause the coach was locked. Waited quick a while as the tour guide also couldn't contact him.. turned out the driver went to buy some medicine..

Then it was a quick stop to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Library of Alexandria).. didn't have time to walk around because we just stop along the road for some pictures.. From our viewpoint, this is what we see and could take..

but the library is actually quite impressive..

yup the sloping building above is the library!

Actually this library is close to the site of the Ancient Library of Alexandria which was a great library in the ancient world. It was the first known library of its kind to gather a serious collection of books from beyond its country's borders. Named after Alexander the Great, it flourished under the patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty and functioned as a major center of scholarship from its construction in the third century B.C. until its destruction in 48 B.C. around the time of Rome's conquest of Egypt.


After that we did drive pass the El Morsi Abu El Abas Mosque, the city's largest mosque dedicated to the patron saint of Alexandria's fishermen and sailors. Then we made our 3 hours journey back to Cairo..

We left Alexandria at about 4pm and there was no rest stop this time round.. We also got caught in a jam and by the time we reach our dinner place, it was already 8pm!!
Most of us rushed to the toilet upon reaching the restaurant :p

Our only chinese meal throughout the trip.. but it was so so only.. :p

But at least the restaurant was relatively close to our hotel and we reached the hotel at about 9pm.. only to be told we had to wake up super duper early the next day to catch our domestic flight to Luxor!!

Want to know what time we need to wake up? Read on.. :p