I took a short trip to Alexandria this weekend. Alexandria (or al-Iskandaria, الاسكندرية) is a city in northern Egypt on the Mediterranean Sea.
It is nowhere near as big or as crowded as Cairo, and the air there is much more fresh. We (Lindsay, Madina, Abbie and I) took the 2.5 hour train ride from Cairo to Alexandria Thursday evening and got in relatively late. I was hungry, so I headed across the street from the hotel and attempted to get food from the little restaurant nearby. It was a challenge because they didn't have anything that I'm used to ordering, so I just picked something and said it, a meat concoction called Kofta. It turned out to be really good, and it was the first time I'd had it. We all ended up going back there the next night for dinner, although somehow we managed to get something very different despite ordering the same thing. I never understand why that happens here.
The first day we were there, we got up in time to get breakfast at the hotel (white bread, butter, processed cheese spread and jam; the Egyptians in the hotel got Egyptian bread and foule). We spent the day wandering along the water, stopping at various tourist attractions along the way, including the Citadel, the Unknown Soldier monument and a Roman amphitheater.
We had possibly the best meal I've had in Egypt on Friday. Alexandria is known for its fish, so we stopped at the Fish Market restaurant and ate fresh fish. We all ended up ordering the same type of fish. We also all split a hummus salad (which was amazing; hummus is surprisingly hard to find in Cairo), essentially just a bunch of small bowls with different types of hummus next to a traditional salad. We also were given freshly-baked bread, Egyptian-style this time. It's hard to find good fish in Cairo, and I'd be wary of eating anything out of the Nile, so it's not fresh like in Alexandria.
We eventually found our way back to the hotel and got ready to go out to a bar that was a few blocks away. It was an American-style bar, supposedly one of the few bars in Alexandria since it is a conservative city.
The next morning, we again woke up just in time for the included hotel breakfast. I managed to get Arabic bread when I asked, but they still didn't give me foule, just the standard non-Egyptian spreads. Oh well, it was closer. We really only managed to see the Alexandria library on Saturday before heading back. It has a really unique design and is one of the must-sees for Alexandria.
After seeing the library, we went to a park to relax for about an hour before tracking down the train station and catching the next train back to Cairo. We were back in our dorm by 7 Saturday night. It was a nice, relaxing weekend, and we saw everything there that we really wanted to. I may travel back up in December because it was so nice and the trip is cheap and short.
sweet as!
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