Prior to starting our tour of Egypt & Jordan, wE had organised an overnight trip to Alexandria, on the Mediterranean coast. We were picked up early in the morning in a private car with a driver and our own guide, Modi, who as it turned out would also be our guide for our main tour through Egypt. It was about a 2 hour drive, on a new highway, with for Egyptian norms very little traffic. The trip was interrupted due to haze on the dessert road, where the police closed the road and we had to wait for about 30 mins until it cleared. Speeds up to 150km/hr were reached…

Our first stop was the Catacombs of Kom Ash Shuqqafa crypt which was found by accident when a donkey fell into it, I don’t know what happened to the donkey but from what I saw it can’t have been good. Depending on how rich you were dictated the type of crypt you had, there was even one for horses.

Our next stop was a massive column, Pompey,s Pillar, with the unofficial name to do with a main sail mask as from a distance at sea, this is what is looked like. After all the hard work of sight seeing, we went had some of the best seafood I have ever tasted for a cost of less than 10 AUD. We had filale, prawns, calamari and a halved fish with a tomato and vegetable sauce, it was fresh and the batter was perfect, this is a meal I think I will remember for the rest of my life.

From there was the highlight of the overnight trip, the Alexandria Library, it is the largest open plan library in the world and opened in 2002 and is near the site of the orginial library that was burnt down 391 AC years before. A competition was run for the design of the library and it was won by a Danish where the objective of the design was to maximize the amount of light in the reading room and there were about 11 levels with 8 in the reading room. The unexpected highlight of the library was the Saddat exhibit who was the President who negioated peace with the Israel’s and then was shot dead by the Muslin Brotherhood at a military parade.You can see where he got shot on his clothes and the blood. We then headed to our hotel which had wonderful views of the Mediterranean and we went for a walk however couldn’t stomach dinner because of the massive lunch. The next day we went for a walk along the water front, had a simple and delicious breakfast with feta and flat bread. We had three sites to visit with the first being the Presidential Palace with a beautiful park, from there we went to the Fort which also had the second oldest Mosque in Alexandria. We saw where they had designed the defenses with slots to pour hot molten oil down and slit windows for guns. The last attraction was my favourite and it was a Kom Al Dinka coliseum and a Roman bath house that was discovered in 1960 and restored by Polish archeologists. The acoustics were amazing and they uncovered a mosaic tiled floor that had birds which had amazing detail.

We had take away kebabs, which are really Sslash and another speedy trip back to Cairo. Alexandria was amazing, a beautiful, quaint seaside city with an extraordinary history and a more moderate climate than Cairo, a must see place.