Alexandria

On Thursday, 3 July, I made my way from Amman to Alexandria. Although I had to get up at 3:30 a.m. for a 4:30 a.m. taxi pick-up for a 7:00 a.m. (the four straight hours of sleep that night was my best effort in Amman) the flight itself was uneventful. Arriving in Alexandria was a little bit more of a challenge. The Alexandria airport is smaller than you might imagine, but packs a lot of chaos into a small space. I ran into one of those classic Catch-22 situations where I couldn't get my passport stamped because I didn't have my visa - so they waved me over to the "bank" to exchange currency and get my visa, but I couldn't pass over to that area of the terminal (a good forty feet) because I didn't have my passport (still with the passport agent). Luckily it was a problem that a lot of yelling across the terminal could settled so that I had my visa and my passport and was out the door in a couple minutes. Finding a taxi was a little more of a challenge and I broke one of my personal rules by getting into a taxi with a driver who, in response to a query about the cost, replied, "sure, no problem, whatever." Disaster always follows. Actually, the taxi driver was pretty charming and shared his hot tea with me while driving. He overcharged me magnificently, but such is life.

I stayed at the Sofitel Cecil, mainly for literary reasons. It is one of W. Somerset Maugham's old haunts. It has a lovely faded splendor about it, which matches the city itself pretty well. Actually, the city that it reminded me the most of was not an Arabic city at all, but rather Mumbai, India. Part of it was doubtless the curving coastline, but part of it was also the weathered magnificence of it. I'd definitely stay there again, they have a great terrace for breakfast in the morning and a wonderful roof-top Chinese restaurant. The front desk folks were pretty good and, although they were in my pocket a lot (typical for Egypt), they were also pretty helpful. One of them even ran out to go track down a train ticket for me.

The city, the little I saw of it, was pretty interesting. It hasn't been invaded too much by the U.S., although I saw McDonald's and Baskin-Robbins and even a T.G.I. Friday's, but mostly it was Arabic establishments. There was a lot of diversity in the city and I even ate at a Greek restaurant one night called Alexander Athianos - I had the "Alexander Rice" which was a pile of rice with a sea food hat on top.