Days 708 - 711 - Alexandria, Egypt to Cairo
A Riot of a City
Evening View From Stiegenberger Cecil Hotel
Alexandria is a riot of a city. You can feel it the moment you arrive. Thousands of people walking in every direction. The incessant beep-beep-beeping of microbuses, taxis, scooters, tuk-tuks. We walked Alexandria's famed Corniche along the Mediterranean Sea, a place Alexander himself once strolled as he imagined the city he would make his empire’s capital. Nowhere did we see another tourist. Cyndy and I stood out like aliens, so rare that children on the sidewalks would sometimes stop and simply stare. We spent four days exploring the new Library of Alexandria (the original housed the world's greatest library until it was burned and fell into ruin about 600 years after Alexander created it in 300 BCE), and explored the city's great Citadel where the magnificent Lighthouse of Alexandria once stood, 300 feet high. Along with the Great Pyramid of Giza near Cairo, it was the tallest human-made structure on earth and one of the 7 Original Wonders of the World. We tried restaurants at the Citadel and along the Corniche and seafood, wherever we ate it, was delicious. Strolling among the crowds on a Friday evening, carts of pomegranate juice and roasted corn lined the sidewalks.
Two days before departure, we thought we had better track down the city's train station to arrange ticketing back to Cairo where we would then board our ship up the Nile. THAT turned out be an experience. All of that and more in my Vagabond Dispatches (https://vagabond-adventure.com/vagabond-stories) and upcoming books about our journey. Suffice to say, we learned a lot!
The Steigenberger Cecil Hotel, Alexandria
We were genuinely sorry to depart the Steigenberger Cecil hotel which had been our home in Alexandria. We loved the old-world charm of the place and the riotous views of the city and the Mediterranean. We had grown attached to the staff that we saw each morning at breakfast. There was Amr. He was a dark-blue-suit-crisp-white-shirt sort of man; tall, dark haired, with a remarkable resemblance to David Schwimmer from the TV show Friends. He greeted us each morning, checking to see if we wanted a mochaccino or latte, Americano or cappuccino in his heavily accented English. He seemed to never stop, smiling as he glided from patron to patron while deftly managing his staff of waiters.
The Fine Staff of the Steigenberger Cecil Hotel in Alexandria (Photo - Chip Walter)
The Steigenberger Cecil is an upscale hotel. Generally, we don’t stay in those, but Egyptian friends of ours had told us that Egypt only had two kinds of hotels, upscale and the opposite. So we settled on the Cecil in Alexandria and the Steigenberger Tahrir in central Cairo and later a third Steigenberger in Giza, near the great pyramids. All of them were excellent. but the Cecil was special, a throwback to the days of high class 1930s style restaurants and hostelries you see in old movies. It was easy to joke with the staff; even the older chef, who would sometimes painfully walk our omelets out to our table, always smiling.
If you find yourself in the Cecil, the hotel buffet is excellent. Besides the eggs and mounds of pastries there was fish and fruit and hummus, and baba ghanoush and pita, cereals, dried fruit, oats and cream of wheat. But what I couldn't find here or anywhere else in all of Alexandria was decaf coffee. I had found it in Cairo, even other parts of Greece, but here it was as non-existent as honesty in Elon Musk's C-suite. I love coffee but stopped drinking the caffeinated variety years ago after leaving CNN. I bounced around enough on my own without needing any stimulants. These days caffeinated coffee would hit me like a couple of lines of Coke. But Amr, otherwise, the soul of deference, assured me that decaf coffee was quite out of the question. He was very sorry. Apparently, there are limits to what one can do for one’s clients.
Alexandria, Egypt ( Photos Chip Walter)
Visiting the Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Heading Back to Cairo
Following our final breakfast, it was time to head back to Cairo. We took pictures with the gang, hugs all around, gathered up our gear and headed to Alexandria’s Misr (Main) Station and the mayhem within before boarding our afternoon Talga train.
Egypt’s Talga Trains — Best in Class (Photos - Chip Walter)
Egypt’s Talga trains are fast and clean. The big engine hauled our coaches out of the bottom end of Alexandria past miles of detritus lined along the rails, mostly smashed rocks and bricks, mixed with countless plastic bottles and bags. This was a very poor part of town, even for Egypt. The train gathered speed and rolled into the heart of the Nile Delta to Edi Gaber, and then through Damenhour, onto farmlands, great swaths of flat green ground that shocked the eyes after so much desert — carpets of olives, fig trees, dates, corn, sunflower, and rows of crops that I couldn't identify. It reminded me of sections of Baja Mexico, where we had driven the Baja 1000 south past Ensenada a couple of years earlier on our journey. [LINK] The train hauled us onto the towns of Tanta and Benba and finally toward Cairo itself. Along the way knots of brick and cement apartments arose, interspersed with glass and cement office buildings and then disappeared until the next city rose up.
Evening found us edging into Cairo’s immense Ramses train station where we dragged our bags out of our coach and into the thick traffic outside. Cars, taxis, microbuses, minibuses, mammoth buses clustered like grape bunches everywhere. In the midst of it all we found a small, wiry cabby who rushed us to his battered taxi where we promptly remained in traffic going almost nowhere for 45 minutes. Welcome to Cairo :-).