Alexandria the Second Capital of Egypt

Our third full day in Egypt (Wednesdy March 25, 2009) was spent traveling to Alexandria about three hours away from Cairo. It is the city that of course Alexanda the Great made the capital of Egypt when the Romans ruled in Egypt.

Today Alexandria is known as the second capital of Egypt. It sits on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and is a common vacation spot for Egyptians. It is very much a coastal city of about only 12 million people. My initial impression was that it is much nicer, less hectic, less crowded and more relaxed.

We left our hotel at 6:15AM for what was a full day of touring. Once in Alexandria we first stopped and visited the water front area and sat by the Mediterranean Sea (those are the pictures of us by the water). We then went to visit the "Kom El-Shuqafa Monuments" which is a underground Roman tomb with egyptian details. Next was a stop at the Roman Theatre or the remains of what was once the theatre. We spent about two hours touring the new "Bibliotheca Alexandrina" or simply the Library at Alexandria. This is a new structure dedicated in 2002. The ancient library of Alexandria is mentioned several times in historical text and was the depository of a great deal of knowledge. Sadly it was destroyed twice and now the original site sites under water. This new library was built to honor that historic past and is a beautifully contructed building. It has the largest reading room in the world and has seven levels to it (Three of which are below sea level). It is a modern day technologically advanced library with several really cool projects going on like the digital library, web page project, and a project to record Egyptian history. You can check out the library for yourself on line at wwww.bibalex.org
The last site we visited was "Montazah" which has one of the summer palaces used by the Egyptian President. That is the palace we are standing in front of in the pic.

We took this opportunity to sample some local Egyptian food. We had a dish called "Koshary" which consist of rice, Black lentils, tomato sauce, macroni, and onions. Yes a rather strange combination of food but it was actually very tasty. That is the dish in the pic above on the table. It was also cheap only 5LE (about 1 U.S.D). You know what they say when in Rome and we took the opportunity to sample some local flare.