ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT

I arrived and had to fight off the numerous taxi drivers and hotel touts that I have now grown used to. The place I wanted to stay at was almost a mile away, on the beach so a taxi would have been nice, but I didn’t want to get taken to another hotel after the driver insists mine has burned down. It turned out to be a long walk, but gave me a good look at the city. The weather was perfect, but not quite warm enough for sunbathing so the beach area was pretty empty. The city itself was surprisingly dirty for a beach resort. It has a population of 5 million, but the beach area in the city center seems like it’s in a medium size town. The roads were pothole filled and falling apart on the edges as well.

I found the hotel I wanted to try and went up the elevator to the 6th floor lobby. I asked for a single room and the woman said it would be the Egyptian equivalent of $9. On a whim I asked if they had any suites and she said yes and that would be $24. Wow, I didn’t have high hopes, but if the suite was suite-like at all that would be pretty sweet. I asked to see both rooms and a bellman showed them to me. The single room on the floor above was very similar to the European rooms I had become used to, but it had two small beds with thin mattresses and a sideways view of the beach from its balcony. The suite was one floor higher and was almost twice as large. The most striking thing was it had a large balcony and a full and glorious view of the harbor, but otherwise it was more like a large American-type hotel room with two queen size beds and a full size refrigerator. It didn’t have a living room, but it was very nice and plush. Since I was mainly in Alexandria to get away from Cairo for a bit while I waited for my India visa I decided to treat myself to the suite.

I checked in and then went looking around town for some lunch. There were a couple of tourist restaurants in beachfront hotels nearby, but I wanted to find something more authentic. I walked around for 30 minutes and saw a few fast food places and that was it. It was Friday afternoon, which is like Sunday evening in the Muslim world, but I didn’t see any closed restaurants either. Over the next 2 days I learned the hard way that there are very few restaurants in Alexandria, period. I ended up getting a value meal at a KFC and it was pretty good as a change of pace.

I just stayed in and watched movies on the large TV that evening. There were about 20 total channels, but two showed American movies with Arabic subtitles around the clock, just like HBO and Showtime. I watched a few movies and felt very relaxed. It was nice to be able to spread out in a large room and the view of the harbor really did make it feel like a suite.

The next day I decided to have a look around town. The only real tourist attractions in town are some catacombs a few miles away and a fort I could see at the edge of the harbor. My book said the catacombs were just okay and also hard to reach so I didn’t bother with them, but I did take a very long walk along the beach around to the fort. I wasn’t going to go in, but it was only about a dollar and it looked interesting from up close. A uniformed and armed security guard gave me a tour in English, or at least it reminded me of English. It last about 15 minutes and he did a good job so I decided to give him a 5 Egyptian pound tip, or about 80 U.S. cents. He was flabbergasted by the size of the tip. It was at that point that I realized even a decent job like a guard at a museum probably makes less than that each hour. I think he mainly was just practicing his English guide skills, but when I asked if he could accept tips he said yes.

I was looking for a restaurant for lunch on the way back and wound my way through the outdoor marketplace that stretches for a kilometer or so a block off the beach and I found one fish place that only served fish and nothing else. I guess locals just eat every meal at home. I finally found a place close to my hotel and had a delicious kebab meal for about $2 complete with salad and bread.

Later that evening I decided to go out and find a bar recommended in my book. The first one I found was more like a restaurant and the beer was warm so I looked for the second, but never found it. I found the third recommended place near my hotel and they were blaring American music from the 60s and 70s to a mixed crowd of English expats and locals. I had a few beers there and then grabbed some take out chicken at a nearby place and enjoyed it up in my suite.

The next morning I lazed around the room for a while after the included breakfast and then caught a taxi to the train station for the noon train to Cairo. Unfortunately, the noon train was like a milk train and it stopped many times and had no tourist class. Foreigners are only allowed on the top class trains in Egypt since those have plain-clothes security on them while the normal trains don’t. I guess after some tourists were killed by terrorists on a train about 8 years before the only way the government could get off the ‘Don’t Go’ lists for Americans and Brits is to have high security on select trains. The 1 p.m. train was also sort of a slow one and got in only a few minutes before the 2 p.m. high-speed train. I bought a ticket for the last 2 p.m. train and went to a restaurant across the street for a chicken kebab lunch.

Once on board I could see this train was a bit nicer than the one I took there, but still dirtier than European trains. It cost the same $6 and was extremely comfortable. I was back in Cairo a little over two hours later.