Egypt

Today I woke up at 4AM, wide awake and ready to go. It will take a while to adjust to the eight hour time change between home and Egypt. We had such an amazing and wonderful trip. My mind is swirling with memories I want to share. I will try to sort them out so you can make sense of the awe and wonder I felt seeing this ancient, far away land.

Our first touring day was Tuesday, October 27. We walked out of our hotel to board a bus to Alexandria. I looked across the street and there, right in front of me was the great pyramid. I felt completely awed by the sight, but we would have to wait a day to see it more closely. We headed north for a two hour drive through the desert. This part of the desert has been reached with some irrigation, so there were plants growing along the way. It reminded me of the California desert, with palm trees, oleander bushes and eucalyptus trees. We passed grape vineyards and a banana groves.

I loved Alexandria. It is a big, modern, vibrant city on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The streets are narrow and crowded with cars and donkey carts and beautiful people sharing the roads. We saw crowds of Muslim school girls, men in sidewalk cafes smoking their water pipes, and old women in black head coverings shopping in the many small open markets. There flocks of sheep in the middle of downtown. Bright laundry hung from the windows of most apartments looking like colorful banners decorating the city.








Mixed int the middle of this modern city are the ruins of the ancient civilization that made this place famous. The great library of Alexandria has been replaced with a modern building that only reminds us of the ancient library Alexander built.



Alexander the Great built a lighthouse here that was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was destroyed long ago by an earthquake. A citadel stands there now that was built by a great sultan in the ninth century.

This causeway was built by Alexander the Great to connect the city to the great lighthouse.


Dennis was fascinated by all the wells in Egypt. Here he is posing by the well at the Citadel.


My friend Sharon and I standing in front of the Citadel



We visited the Alexandria Museum and saw many old artifacts, including a mummy in a sarcophagus.



Recently the ruins of an amphitheater were unearthed that had been built during the time of Roman rule. I could imagine Roman soldiers and maybe even Cleopatra and Antony enjoying a performance there.



Our last stop was at Pompey's Pillar flanked by two sphinx that were placed there by Cleopatra to honor her two great loves, Julius Caesar and Antony. It made me realize that these were real people, not just characters in a movie.


Egypt kept on reminding me that all these famous ruins were built by real people, not that much different than us.