Iskandria (Alexandria)

This morning, we left for a day trip to Alexandria. It was about a 2.5 hour bus ride, but we stopped on the way to get fateer, which is like a breakfast pastry. The place where we got fateer was very VERY strange. It looked like a zoo/carnival had just had a restaurant tacked onto it. People ordered food and then you could just walk right over to the animals. They had dogs (like cockerspaniels, pitbulls, newfoundlands, etc., which was really weird), ostriches, lions, monkeys, llamas, roosters (they were just roaming around and Curt and I had to avoid 2 of them that were fighting), and a lot of other strange strange animals. They were all in pretty small cages and the whole thing was pretty sad, so I stopped taking pictures pretty early on. However, I did get a nice picture of Rob expressing his emotions towards the fateer:

Anyways, once we got to Alexandria, it was a great time. First we visited the Citadel of Qaitbay. It was really cool and we got to walk around all of the towers and everything:

Then we went out to lunch at at restaurant called Fish Market. I got Gray Mullet and it was really fresh and delicious. However, it was served with the head, so I made Zack cut it off for me. That's what friends are for. Then, seeing as we were at the Mediterranean sea, a group of us went to the beach. Then we visited the Library of Alexandria, which was really impressive technologically, but I wasn't really impressed with the building itself. I thought it was going to be more... old-looking? It was pretty modern, and I just wasn't expecting it. It was a nice building, don't get me wrong, but I guess I just had different expectations.

1. tourists?: I don't know what it was, but people in Alexandria acted like they had NEVER seen a tourist before. You would think that a lot of tourists would visit Alexandria, no? People asked to take pictures of us and with us. It was really strange in my opinion.

2. customer service: Every restaurant I've been to in Cairo has had the same sort of laid-back quality about them, but today at Fish Market it was very pronounced. People in Egypt never seem to be in a hurry, and it's no different in restaurants. We were on a time limit today though, and we must have asked 3 or 4 different waiters if we could have our check. I think the slower pace here is nice sometimes, but it can be frustrating sometimes when you're a tourist in a hurry to see as much as you can before you have to leave.

3. pictures: Alexandria gets an A+ in being photogenic.