Alexandria II

Our last two days have been less about visiting the main tourist sites, and more about walking around aimlessly and exploring the city. After failing to make it to the nearby town of Rosetta yesterday (the same town where the Rosetta stone was found - a supposedly peaceful town sitting next to the western branch of the Nile), we decided to visit the Montazah Park in Alexandria. The park is beautiful, sitting right next to the Mediterranean. It was once the garden to a Khedive's palace, but is now open to the public (not the case with the palace, which is one of the summer homes of the current president). To our increasing annoyance, however, yesterday was a big holiday here (Coptic Easter), so the park was packed with people, many of whom made it their business to yell different things at us in English, from "welcome" to "Happy New Year." It gets a bit tiring after a while.

To get there, we took a tram and then a 20 minute cab drive, but bold and reckless as we are, we decided to do without the cab ride back. Little did we know it'd be a 2 hour walk back to the closest tram station, most of it under the baking sun, pushing our way through hordes of Egyptian vacationers (now that I re-read this, it sounds a bit worse than it was, although we were tired of walking after about an hour). We finally made it to the tram station with a few blisters on our feet, but also loads of pride after our two hour feat. And last night we slept so well...

This morning we decided to walk to the eastern part of town (Montazah Park is on the western edge of town). We're on our way there right now. We've just stopped at this little shop on the Corniche to have the best mango juice... EVER!