Alexandria

I finished finals Dec 13th and was so happy to be done. I really needed a break...even though I just had Thanksgiving vacation. Oh well. I even managed to pull straight A's! To celebrate the end of school I went to Alexandria with a few of my friends. Alexandria was founded as the capital of Egypt by Alexander the great in 332 BC and became one of the greatest cities in the world. It is also believed that it thrived as a Jewish city and Coptic Christianity was founded there. After Alexander's death, Ptolemy took over the city and helped its sophistication flourish. He even founded the great library that held thousands of manuscripts and scrolls from famous scholars of history, philosophy and religion. Unfortunately the library burned down. Alexandria is also known for its lighthouse, catacombs, and recently a new bridge.

Alexandria is a beautiful city and I had a hell of a time getting there. To begin with, I had to meet my friends at the train station. No big deal, except I didn't know exactly where it was and I arrived before my friends. I asked a little girl where the train station was, but she pointed me down an alley and there was no way I was going down there! I tried walking around a little bit, but became lost even more. I finally got the guts to ask some security guards and they pointed me in the right direction:) My friends still hadn't shown up so I decided to buy the train tickets for them...but when I went to buy the 9:30 train tickets the man at the counter told me that the time didn't exist and the next train would come at 11 am. oh no!! It takes about 3 hours to get to Alexandria and we were only going to be there for one day. Once my friends showed up we decided to take a taxi but no one would drive the distance and they wanted way too much money. Anyway we ended up squishing ourselves in the back of a micro-bus. Luckily it was an easy and an uneventful ride. The driver dropped us off in the middle of a street and we had no idea where we were but luckily a man spoke English and helped direct us to the train station and corniche (boardwalk to the water). The walk to the corniche was amazing. The streets were not as crowded as Cairo, there was a clear blue sky and even some rain! The taxis didn't honk their horns, the buildings had European influence, and it was really nice to see something different. And to top it off the view was amazing! And of course the Mediterranean Sea was never ending. My friends and I strolled along the corniche and I even managed to embarrass everyone and fall two times lol. While we were walking we spotted some fishermen pulling in nets. We stopped and watched them only to discover that they were bringing in very small fish. After that we were hungry and decided to walk to a well known Greek restaurant but it was too far away and so we acted as dorky tourists and rode a horse drawn carriage. It was actually fun and worth it because the food at the restaurant was delicious! haha we stayed at the restaurant for 4 or 5 hours and watched the sunset over the water. I have to say it was a wonderful location. To top it off we visited the Alexandria Library...very modern and cool looking. I think I could actually get some homework done there!!:) After that we took the train home and ran into some more problems when we found out that the lady gave us tickets for 2:30 pm even though we asked for 7!! But the crew members were generous and let us stay on the train in the smoking section between the cars. Although we had many troubles getting to Alexandria and back home, it was a great experience. We learned to handle stressful situations and visited one of the greatest cities in Egypt's history!

Enjoy the pics....
Also, for more information on Alexandria check out these websites:
http://www.halexandria.org/dward019.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria

Alexandria