Day 7

Tuesday, June 8, 2010 (Alexandria, Egypt) – We contemplated staying an extra day in Siwa, but after consulting our guides, we realized that we pretty much cashed out on all the area had to offer yesterday. On our way out of town, we stopped at the Temple of the Oracle, which was the same place Alexander the Great went to find out if he was the son of Zeus. I’m not sure what he discovered, but since his remains were allegedly discovered a few miles from there, he didn’t have much time to enjoy it either way.

As we were driving out of town, I finally started looking for more people to photograph. Because of customs, I was trying to be respectful, but the people are all so colorful that I really wanted to capture some of the essence (and, let’s be honest, we were getting out of Dodge, so what could they do?). The other thing was that we began noticing that we had not seen even one woman outside of Cairo without a headdress. And in Siwa, the women didn’t even have the cutouts in their burkas for eyes; instead they had thin pieces of cloth that prevented anyone from seeing in but, presumably, allowed them to see out (I’m not totally convinced about that, though).

Calvin and Sammy are really into Harry Potter right now, and when Sammy (age 6) saw one of these women in town, he asked if she was a Dementor. Again, I would like to say that I was culturally sensitive enough to tell him that he should respect their customs, but frankly I just couldn’t stop laughing. They really did look like J.K. Rowling’s description of the men who suck out your soul.

It took about eight hours of driving, pretty much the same way as we came, which means the first three hours or so were filled with sand. Every once in a while there was a radio tower (or some other sort of tower), and there always seemed to be a tent set up nearby, which led us to believe there might be a person stationed at each one. I’m not sure an assignment could get much more miserable. At one of them, the guy had set up a few water troughs for camels, and many were congregating around and drinking, leading us to believe that these were the guy’s only friends.

In other areas, there were random piles of rocks scattered around. When we drove by the other day, I thought maybe there was a religious meaning or something created by men in UFOs or something like that. Today, I decided the guy must have just been unbelievably freaking bored. I mean, really, what else do you do in the desert, hundreds of miles from the next closest human?

It was 2 p.m. by the time we rolled through Marsa Matruh, so we were all pretty hungry and looking for something that was reasonably quick and easy. The first thing we saw was a McDonalds. Now, I honestly don’t think I’ve had a burger at McDonalds since about 2005, but when I saw this particular one, I was willing to make an exception. The entire restaurant was outdoors and overlooking the turquoise turning into deep blue in the Mediterranean Sea. Seriously, if you offered this to any restaurant in the States, I don’t think McDonalds is getting the land.

On long car trips, one of the ways to pass time is to be looking for things, like states on license plates or types of cars or whatever might be fun. Darren and I spent most of the trip between Marsa Matruh and Alexandria looking for some signs we saw on the drive out. They were lovely signs, neatly printed on stone and set in wood but not gaudy, kind of like signs outside national parks in the States. These, however, were welcoming your to (or warning you of) “Forward British Minefield, October 23rd, 1942.” The tourist guides don’t often tout these fields filled with land mines from the various wars, but Egypt apparently has many.

We thought we were close to Alexandria around 6 p.m., but the signs indicated we had to make a U-turn, which put us into the kind of rush hour where cars are 14 wide across three lanes (and the median and the shoulder). We were frustrated, thinking that we must have made a wrong turn. What we really wanted to know was how we could have possibly passed a city of 4.1 million people and not seen a sign. But soon we realized that the streets around here are goofy and we just felt like we were going to the wrong way. At least, that’s what we’re telling ourselves because surely we wouldn’t make a wrong turn, especially one that puts us in a traffic jam.

I’m not blaming city planners for the goofy streets, mainly because most of them are built directly on top of the roads from 2,500 years ago, and getting mad at Cleopatra’s people just doesn’t seem like it would do much good.

We had a hotel picked out and hoped they would have a spare room. When we got to town, I was reading my book in English and wondering what the street signs said in Arabic. We started making circles that grew smaller and smaller as we felt like we were getting closer. Finally, we knew we were close, so Darren parked the car, and we were going to search on foot. That’s when Calvin asked if we were looking for the Egypt Hotel, and we said yes.

“Oh. It’s on the third floor of the building across the street,” said Cal. Apparently he was the only one that was smart enough to notice the two signs by the door directly across from us, not to mention the gigantic sign above.

The city is loud and crowded, like a smaller version of Cairo. However, with a fourth-floor suite that overlooks the Mediterranean Sea, I’m not complaining.