Eid and Alexandria – Tuesday 24 to Thursday 26 Oct 2006

We’ve just had the Ramadan feasts. On Tuesday and Wednesday Egypt celebrated Eid – its kind of like Christmas back home (but without the fat man in the red suit or the presents!).

Chris and I spent Tuesday and Wednesday sitting around the pool trying to get a jump start on our work. We couldn’t go anywhere because everything was closed for Eid. There were lots of people at the hotel – extra locals and extra tourists. There was even a contiki tour (at one point they were being so loud and boisterous that I thought one of the local Egyptian ladies was going to have a go at them – it was very funny).

Eid is basically the feast days after all the fasting they have done for the month of Ramadan. Its where they get to really celebrate.

It is very hard to concentrate on work when you are laying in the sun by the pool, but we got through a fair bit so that’ll help next week.

On Thursday we went to Alexandria. We basically toured around and saw loads of stuff. We went to Port Qaitbey and saw The Fort of Qaitbay. Its a big castle like fortress on the edge of the Mediterranean sea. We wandered around the Alexiandria Museum – that was pretty cool. Most of the stuff they found in Alex was either buried under 6m of sand, or in the ocean. So at this museum they have huge pictures of the monuments etc under the water where they found them. Its weird seeing a 5 m high statues with just its head and shoulders sticking out of the sand.

Then we went to the Catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqafa. We walked down a spiral staircase into the bowels of the earth to look at where they have interned the bodies of the dead. On ground level there was just a little hut and a few monuments, but under the ground there were loads of holes when coffins used to sit. It was huge underneath, very deceptive! Unfortunately we couldn’t take photos inside the catacombs – they didn’t want to damage the paiting that are still there thousands of years later.

We also looked in the door of a few of the other sites – like Pompey’s pillar and The Roman Amphitheatre. Then we had lunch at the Fish Market. Its three stories high and overlooking the Mediterranean sea. Absolutely gorgeous view, plus very nice food. You have to pick the fish you want from the tabled. I had a sea bream, very tastey but I didn’t likeit coming ou to em with the head and tail still on it – eyes and all!

Once we’d had lunch we drive across town to the Montaza Palace and wandered around the palace gardens. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of people there celebrating Eid (it’s a pretty huge area). People were having picnics and playing with their children. It was nice to walk around by the sea – getting that sea breeze. I think it was the first time in two weeks that Chris and I weren’t breathing in smoke! Its unbelievable how many people smoke here and where they smoke – everywhere!! And they chain smoke – its disgusting actually. They are even allowed to smoke in the restaurants. So gross and we’re SO over it!

They were even smoking in the toilets!. I had the misfortune of needed to pee before we left Alex so had to go into one of the public toilets – that was an extremely revolting experience! I had to roll my trousers up and my thongs were sticking to the ground… I’m going to have to get some gumboots in future. Because they don’t use toilet paper much here (mostly wash with water instead) there was water all over the floor. SOOOO gross. If it hadn’t been a 2 hour car ride home I’d have crossed my legs and waited it out J

The palace itself was lovely, it’s now mostly used by foreign dignitaries when they are staying in Alex. There is a public bit that people can stay in, but it’s fairly expensive. We even wandered around the waters edge. There were loads of people just sitting watching the waves, but also lots fishing – we saw one kid catch a fish, but I would have only been 5 or 6 cm long, too tiny to eat. We couldn’t decide what they thought they were going to catch – maybe bait for bigger fish later on!

The weather was beautiful; all in all it was a lovely day wandering round Alexandria.