Alexandria

Alex seems to be the favorite destination of Egyptians, but Louise and I weren’t too impressed. Not much to do besides shopping and walking along the Mediterranean (which isn’t nearly as nice as it sounds since the path is right by a busy street). Maybe it was the wrong time of year though….too cold for swimming and the public beaches were rather dismal anyways. We did meander our way into the famous Bibliotecha (a ginormous library), which you have to pay to get into and has a surprising dearth of books. It was right by the university though so it was cool to see all the college kids. The nightlife, aka walking along the streets and shopping, seemed to be the thing to do in Alex. Although my personal favorite was going into the little fruit juice shops and getting fresh squeezed juice for amazingly cheap (strawberry-lemon was the best). We kept going every day, although I think it was the cause of some stomach unrest. We went for a run one morning along the water….got a lot of looks from the locals, a cute old grandpa told us “hurry, hurry, faster, faster,” and a young boy snapped a pic of us on his cameraphone as we were passing, which was…awkward.

Ate THE MOST AMAZING schawerma in Alex at a fast food chain called Gad. Chicken with sautéed onion, green pepper and tomatoes, with tahina in a pita bread for a whopping $1. Egypt is amazing…Louise and I were eating like kings for a few bucks a meal. We managed to get away with pretending to not know what “bakshish” is (a term basically meaning they want you to pay them a tip)….we learned that a confused, innocent face with an added “huh?” did the trick…they were either too polite or didn’t know enough English to accurately describe what they wanted. It’s not that we were against giving them some money (after all it was so cheap) but it was more that they wanted bakshish for doing absolutely nothing. This cute little old man showed us to our hotel room in Alex (which was literally 10 feet away from where we were), and then he just hung around the door moping around obviously expecting some bakshish…

Oh…forgot something funny that happened in Petra. We were walking up the steep path in the middle of nowhere to the monastery, and this cute little Bedouin boy, probably about 4 years old, was playing on the stairs with a broom. He had a cute smile and was looking at the chips in my hand longingly. I offered him a few which he quickly grabbed, and then proceeded to grab the entire bag…I just started laughing, and next thing I knew, he was trying to grab my camera off my neck. At this point, I was like “nooooo! Sorry you can’t have that” and he started pouting. I started to walk past him, when he whipped out his broom and blocked the path so I couldn’t get by! I tried to walk around it, and he kept moving to block my path…..finally managed to sneak my way around him…yes, I’m proud of the fact that I got around a 4 year old…after all, his broom was pretty big and ferocious;)