In the morning we said goodbye to the Paradise Inn, after breakfasting on the cake we ordered the night before. There was one last stop in Alexandria, the archeological dig of Kom el-Dikka, right in the middle of downtown. As Alexandria is a relatively new city, around 330 BC, this site was also relatively new, containing Greco-roman artifacts. Our native guide attempted to speak to the Polish excavators in order to arrange a tour, but the Poles didn’t speak Egyptian. It didn’t occur to him to try to speak English, which they spoke fluently. Unfortunately we could only view from a distance. In a general tightening up of access, much of the site was roped off. Despite Ken’s best efforts he couldn’t finagle us access to the site.
The most impressive part of the site was a nicely preserved roman theater; it even has the seat numbers intact. Very small, it was not intended primarily for theatrical efforts but for the reading and discussion of laws. I got Charles to pose as a Roman orator. His acting chops were not up to the task. Paralleling the theater is the remains of a roman road. Lining one side is a row of columns, on the other a row of shops. Still unearthed on the opposing side is a row of shops and columns over which a canopy probably had been draped, providing shade.
Near the entrance to the site is a display of Greco-roman artifacts recovered from the sea. The statuary on display here had been smoothed and worn down by the action of centuries of the waves. There also was a series of desalination tanks. Objects recovered from the sea are placed in a series of tanks with a gradually decreasing salinity. Much of these objects were recovered near the former location of the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria. As the water level raised a large portion of the ancient city slipped into the sea. Some believe vast treasures lay out in the bay, but the action of salt and water destroys so much.
After that, it was back to Cairo via the desert road. There are two ways to Cairo now, the Nile road inhabited by farmers with donkeys slowing traffic and the new and improved desert road. Naturally we took the desert road back to Cairo. The trip took three hours, so we stopped for refreshments half way through. We stopped at one of the oldest rest stops along the desert road, a large impressive building seemingly from different times. There was a large snack shop and a cafeteria. The cafeteria tantalized us with pizza boxes but no pizza, instead selling some odd pastry or sandwich concoction. In the snack shop I found a carton of cookies called Neo that looked suspiciously like Oreos ™, they tasted like them too, much better than Hydrox. After almost buying fish flavored potato chips, we settled on vinegar and salt. Two Pepsi’s later we were back on the road.
We headed on to Cairo. We passed a futuristic village the SmartVillage, allegedly planned out and computerized by Bill Gates. We saw two traffic accidents. The closer to Cairo the crazier the drivers get. Alexandrians are paragons of driver safety in comparison. We passed rows and rows of tall palm trees, almost reaching the elevated highway on which we drove. In the middle of the divide vendors would walk selling items such as Egyptian flags to soccer fans, bread to hungry drivers and air fresheners. As we left the highway we saw open-air markets run year round, some dedicated to used clothing, some to used car parts. Traffic snarled as we reached downtown Cairo. Finally, near the banks of the Nile, we reached the Ramses Hilton our home for the next three nights.
We arrived at 2:30pm and had until 8:15pm for dinner that night. At 6pm was the Africa Cup match, much anticipated by the locals. Dinner was later the normal due to the horrible service we would likely get if eating during the match. We would have watched the match however our TV was broken. Charles and I decided to explore the Ramses Hilton Center mall across the street from the Hilton. Everyone entering the mall has to pass through a metal detector. Tourists can walk through the metal detector without hindrance, but locals get the whole nine-yards having to take everything out of their pockets. The same went for the Hilton itself. I suppose they do a bit of profiling themselves and will continue doing so until tourists start blowing themselves up.
The first floor was a food court, the most remarkable aspect to my eyes were all the people using hookahs. Last trip I’d only seen them in the Hilton lobby, they seem to be everywhere in Cairo. Perhaps I hadn’t noticed them previously. The mall was vertical so up and up the escalators we went. Most of the shops were tourist shops, some more for the local tourists than foreigners. Most of the others were clothing and CDs.
At the top was a McDonald’s and opposite of that was a movie theater. We decided to stop and see a movie. We saw a list of movie times at one of the three box-office appearing sites. Most people seemed to be going to see Avatar, 3D glasses in hand. There were three theaters on one side and two on the other. A metal detector protects each side. After some discussions with the locals it appears that there are five movie theaters each showing one individual movie, each movie in each theater starts at the exact same time. That seemed odd given the varying lengths of the films, especially Avatar with its monstrous length. We chose “Sherlock Holmes.” After waiting in three different “lines” we managed to get our tickets and select our seats from a chart. Note that there is no such thing as a “line” in Egypt everyone crowds the ticket booth and the strongest one shoves themselves to the head of the line. We noted that we were the only ones going to see “Sherlock Holmes” for that showing. Security was tight, after passing the metal detector the ushers confiscated my poor camera, putting a sticker on my ticket as a claim ticket.
We had the theater all to ourselves. It was a narrow, bowling alley style theater. The movie started twenty minutes late than the 3:30pm advertised time, there must be some flexibility due to length. The movie started with no trailers. Instead a seemingly handwritten movie license card was projected on the screen. The only English on the card was “Sherlock Holmes.” The movie was interrupted midway for a two-minute intermission. I’ve only seen that once before, on the Isle of Malta. When the movie was over we got up and the projectionist immediately turned off the projector, not wasting the precious bulb life on unseen credits.
Back to the hotel we went, keeping an eye on the Africa Cup via the BBC web site. Our dinner would be delayed if it went to a shootout. We didn’t need the web site to learn when Egypt scored their only and decisive goal. The near constant honking of horns from the Cairo streets starting honking in a melodic pattern which I can only assume was some kind of anthem. It grew louder a little later when time expired with Egypt victorious.
It was off to Paprika, a restaurant a half-mile or less from the hotel. At intersections, people waving Egyptian flags celebrated their third straight Africa Cup win. Paprika was near the Nile and we saw boats running up and down the Nile flashing lights in celebration. People walking in groups waving flags walked along the Nile. As dinner progressed we saw trucks full of fans waving flags driving back and forth along the streets. A camera crew slowed down traffic as they interviewed fans whipped into frenzy by the red light on the camera.
Dinner itself was good. I discovered “lemon drink” which was kind of like thicker lemonade with some milk substance on the top. I finally had lentil soup for the first time this trip in Egypt. It was good. Dinner was veal chops and rice. It was good, but not quite as tender as I expected. Dessert was “milk pudding” which was essentially rice pudding without the rice and a little bit of burned sugar as topping.
We walked back to crowds of soccer fans celebrating their victory, not much diminished in the hour or so we’d been eating. Back to the hotel and to sleep we went ready for medieval Cairo the next day.
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