Alexandria Egypt - Reflections of an Extravagant past!

Alexandria isn't the usual place to start a trip through Egypt, but its a pretty good one. Its the sort of place that has the name of a great city and one that I felt I should know more about than I did.

Arriving from India to Alexandria felt that I was traveling in time. Suddenly I'd gone from the 1950's to the 1970's. The Ox-carts and Morris Minors were replaced with a whole lot of 1970's model Fiats, an assortment of similar vintage French cars and a fair proportion of possibly newer, but still 70’s-looking Ladas.

Although there was still dust everywhere, it wasn’t caused by wandering cows. The buildings were a mix of old Soviet-style blocks and some grand old Mediterranean apartments. Though faded, Alexandria still shows glimpses of an extravagant past on every street you walk down. In contrast to India, the traffic seemed organised, the horns quieter and the streets better paved. More importantly there was a working sewerage system.

Photo: Olympus E510, 11-22mm @ 22mm f6.3 - 1/400sec

Glimpses of an extravagant past

Alexandria is a city that I hadn’t really heard about except when reading about the wonders of the ancient world (yes I am a dork). It's a city that I'd assumed had disappeared off the world map in the same way as its lighthouse disappeared under the sea. I’d never met any travelers who had mentioned Alexandria and never really looked into the possibility of going.

When I was booking flights to "escape" from India, I was toying with the option of returning to the familiarity of South East Asia, or going to Turkey. While I wanted to make my way overland somehow, the thought of dealing with the hassle of visas to Pakistan or Iran from India didn't really appeal to me in my weakened state after 6 weeks of on-and-off food poisoning. The cheapest option for getting to Turkey was on a new budget airline "Air Arabia". I ended up looking through their website and discovering that I could also fly to Alexandria in Egypt, so I did.

When I arrived mid-morning, the city was still asleep. Over the next few days I discovered that in winter at least Alexandria didn’t really wake up at all. Shops for the most part stayed closed until 11am, and then there were some that just never seemed to open at all.

"Welcome to Alex"

Wandering about the streets, one of the most common things I heard was “welcome to Alex”. People weren’t trying to sell me anything, they were just being friendly. The city was bathed in beautiful winter sunshine and wandering along the Mediterranean waterfront was a truly blissful experience.

Alexandria certainly doesn't live up to many of the Muslim stereotypes. Couples were out and about in abundance, and walking down the street I was surprised by the many flirtatious glances and eye contact I got from girls walking down the street wearing the Hajib. The other surprise walking about past local shops was the prevalence of raunchy lingerie shops, with lacy bright red underwear and and abundance of feather-bowers. It wasn't something I'd expected and the memory of local girls giggling as they browsed through lingerie while covered practically head to toe is something that still amuses me.

McDonalds in Egypt

Eating McDonalds while traveling is frowned by some travelers - something about being against the "traveler ethos", and not as good as eating local food. Nevertheless, I've eaten a lot of local food, and sometimes like the comfort-factor of something as bad as McDonalds. After India I was glad to be back in a country where McDonalds actually sold Big Mac, and where there weren't any "Maharaja Big Macs" (Mc-double chicken-curry burgers) in sight.

An added bonus of eating at McDonalds, was the fact that it was also the only place that I could find in Alexandria that had wi-fi internet. Unfortunately that only lasted until a big storm apparently cut an underground cable connecting Egypt and Europe, so for the first 2 weeks I was in Egypt I couldn't upload photos or do anything online apart from send a few text emails if I was lucky.