Egyptian Adventures Part I

So as you may or may not know I was in Egypt this past week.  I left Amman Tuesday night (Oct. 23) and returned EARLY Monday morning (Oct. 29). There is so much to tell and Im not sure how to organize it so I will just start at the beginning.

Airport- Amman

            I had some trouble getting to the airport because some of my plans of transportation fell through and then I found out it would be a 20 JD taxi ride by myself and I didn’t want to do that.  I finally met up with some of the boys that live in the neighborhood near me, there were five of us in all so the four guys sat in the back and I had to sit in the front (against cultural norms).  Arriving at the airport we had to go through security before the ticket counter, collect our ticket, go through exit immigration and head to our gate.  The gate was behind another set of security and didn’t open until it was time for our plane to board. I grabbed some KFC for dinner before we went to our gate.

            Once we were through  the second level of security we waited at the gate for about 30 minutes before they told us the plane would be 45 minutes late.  After that 45 minutes they informed us that our plan would be another hour and at a different gate. We gathered up our stuff and stopped by the Pizza Hut to get our free beverage due to our delay.  Once on the plane we found that all six of us along with two others from our program were seated together. We were served dinner on the plane.

Cairo-Alexandria

            Stepping out of customs in the airport in Cairo we were immediately bombarded with offers from taxi drivers to take us to wherever we needed to go.  Since our plane was late we missed our train to Alexandria and we had decided to try to take a bus instead. Once we decided on a taxi and were headed to the bus station we decided to just see how much it would cost for that taxi to drive us all the way to Alexandria.  The driver called his boss and actually helped us to figure out the best price for the van.  He kept telling us to go lower and lower. 

            This guy was so great.  He let us stop on the way and use the bathroom as well as buy snacks.  I think it took about 3.5 hours to get to Alexandria in the cab and we didn’t arrive until about 3:00am.  I was so thankful that we decided to hire the taxi because he drove us right to our hotel and we didn’t have to wander around the city in the wee hours of the morning. 

            We stayed at the Queen Hotel.  It was on the 7th floor and since one of our boys was on crutches I rode the scary elevator with him.  We had a suite.  Three rooms, two of which shared a bathroom and one which had its own.  We girls got the private bath.  The view from our room was amazing.  We stayed up and admired the coast line at night.  When we eventually retired to our own rooms we found the bedding was in a not so desirable condition but there was nothing we could do.  We crawled under the covers and went to sleep.  With the lights out we couldn’t tell we weren’t in the Ritz-Carlton.

Alexandria

            We woke up and were out and about by 10:30.  Our first stop was food.  We were all so hungry.  One of the guys in the group had a guide book that directed us to just about the best meal of our lives (probably because it was food and we needed it.)  From there we decided to wander the streets and do some exploring.  We actually wondered into the courthouse of Alexandria.  It was so interesting.  They had cages in the court room.  Im not quite sure what those were for but every courtroom we saw had them.  From there we caught a cab and went to Citadel of Qaitbay.  This is a fort that was built over the remains of the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

            Two of the boys in our group had a connection in Alexandria at the new Library of Alexandria.  This was a professor of one of their professors from back home. She set us up with a tour of the Library.  I didn’t even realize that there was a library there and never dreamed it would be what we saw.  The best way I can describe it is like a modern Library of Congress but with an ancient-Egyptian tribute design.  I highly suggest going to their website and looking at the resources they have available for anyone to use as needed.

            Upon hearing out travel plans for the night, to take a train from Alexandria to Luxor, and learning that we didn’t have tickets yet she suggested we go and get them as soon as possible.  This lady loaned her driver and her car to two of the guys in the trip to get the tickets .  Turns out we were too late and there were no tickets left.  We headed toward the train station but needed to grab some food first.  I wasn’t planning on eating because the place we went to only had this pasta concoction. One of the boys had disappeared while we were waiting on the food.  He came back a little later holding a sandwich that he had bought for me knowing that I didn’t like pasta and wanting me to eat something. After we ate we bought some toilet paper just in case the food didn’t set well with one of us on the supposedly 12 hour train ride from Alexandria to Luxor. This brought us to probably our biggest adventure of the trip.

Alexandria-Luxor

            So we arrived at the train station and Hannah and I wanted to hit the bathroom once more before we boarded.  The bathroom was a uni-sex one, very surprising in an Arab country.  Most of the toilets were basically just holes in the ground but there were two with stools.  Past those stalls were the urinals…yes I accidentally wandered back there. One of the boys in our group was really good at making friends with people on the street.  He befriended a boy which helped us to get on the train, yes we didn’t have tickets, it was a cultural experience. 

            You cannot even imagine the chaos that occurred while trying to get on this train.  One man brought his own chair and started hitting people with it, people were fighting on the platform.  Basically I got on the train and ran to one of the boys and held tightly to him, I was pretty afraid. Since we didn’t have tickets we didn’t have a seat.  One of the guys who had a seat saw I was upset and gave up his seat for me.  Our group slowly started making friends with random people on the train. Before long half the train knew all of our names and our story about studying in Jordan and why we were studying.

            The other girl in our group eventually lost her seat so she moved back with me and sat in the seat while I sat on her lap.  As one person would kick us out of their seat another would give up their seat for us.  I was on her lap for about 10 hours.  We were given food and children to hold on this little trip.  It was total cultural immersion.  There is no way that I can recap everything that happened on this train.  I will say that our supposedly 12 hour train ride actually took 16.5 hours from start to finish.  It was an adventure that is for sure.

 

Okay that is enough for now.  Stay tuned for part 2, coming soon. Inshallah. 

 PS: Im going to start a youtube page because I have a lot of videos that I want to share but it takes too long to put them on the blog.  Ill keep you updated with that!