25/1: Alexandria
The routine of our lazy days continued. Julian slept while Tim and I went out for breakfast and did our exploring of the city. We collected Julian at around 11 and after his breakfast we made our way to the Alexandria library. The guide book explains that Alexandria is a very famous historical city though due to wars, decay and earthquakes there is very little left to see of it. The original library there was the biggest in the world and set up to be receptical of all the worlds culture and literature. The new bibliotecha is a marvellous architectural accomplishment - can hold up to 8 million books and is at the leading edge of incorporating new technologies - including the project to make over a million books available on line and they have one of only two "book on demand" printers that will let you download, print and bind a book in about 10 minutes. We took a short tour of the library which was enjoyable and interesting but gave the various museums etc inside it a miss. We were dissappointed that the planetarium in the complex was closed.
We had dinner at the 'Coffee Roastery' which had excellent western style meals and great coffee - Julian and I went for beer in the Spitfire bar again - while Tim spent some time on the Internet. I left Julian there talking to a couple of US Navy guys (closer to my age than his). They were giving him some fatherly advice "don't do what I did - get an education, go to college".
26/1/8 Alex to Cairo
We ordered the breakfast in our hotel - it was cheap and easy. But then Tim and I sat at the table waiting for it and found all the tables dirty, a smoking musty smell all around, a TV blaring arabic music .. so we cancelled and bailed out - heading back to the Roastery for breakfast - happy to pay the extra for the cleanliness, good food and pleasant environment.
We checked out of the hotel - which involved an "honest mistake" where the lady tried to overcharge us LE 100 ("my calculator doesn't work very well" she said)
We took the afternoon train back to Cairo, left our luggage in storage and headed off to find a place for dinner and a place to stay. We are much more confident getting around now and so spent a little bit of time working out the subway system to avoid the haggling over a taxi fare.
We ate a cheap food court we had frequented the first time in Cairo - this time Julian tried a different stall for a burger, the owner tried to overcharge him about 25% - but he has learnt a lot from the previous experiences, so stood his ground even as the man got quite angry and aggressive.
We looked at a few different places and finally decided on the Bedouine Hotel which has the best beds we have slept in for ages. When we commented on this the owner boasted that he had bought them from the Sheraton.
Evening we had a beer at the Odeon Palace bar - catching a part of the football game that everyone in Cairo must have been watching . We noticed the lack of traffic and noise as we walked there.
We decided we may as well have a late night - Tim was keen to join an online event which was early morning australian time (and so late night egypt time)so we tried a few places to find one that was open late enough and had reasonable technology. We got back to the hotel quite late - and spent 15 mins or so before retiring to our room being given a sales pitch for tours we could take by the manager.
