Egypt: In which I am very dusty.

So I'm going to try to give you some background on these photos; we'll see how it goes.

The very first thing I learned upon landing in Egypt was the fact that they had lost my luggage. Fabulous. Luckily, we had somebody with us who spoke Arabic, and I was (somewhat) reassured that I might one day be reunited with my suitcase.

We left the Cairo airport at dusk to begin our 5 mile drive to Alexandria. Let me tell you, I have never in my life been happier to be in a bus. Traffic in Egypt is...there are no words.

I can't even really explain it with a picture. But just try to imagine four lanes of traffic on a three lane road. And everybody is doing over 60 unless they're at a dead stop. And they leave two or three inches between them and the next car. Yeah, it's crazy. They're both the best and the worst drivers I've ever seen.

They also use a strange combination of honking and headlight flashing to indicate (as far as I can tell) one or more of the following: 1) I am behind you 2) I am in your blind spot 3) This car has a horn.

Anyway, 5 hours of traffic later, we got to Alexandria and our hotel:

Our hotel was very nice and, as I discovered the next morning...

...had a balcony with a pretty cool view. And it was in a nice little square...

...with some cool palm trees.

Also, there was a great view of the Mediterranean:

And so began our stay in Alexandria. Here are some miscellaneous pics:

The tall thing across the street is a really cool mosque. I should also point out that crossing a street in Egypt is all about faith: you have to believe that they will stop. It helps if you are traveling in a group of 20+ people because you can cross the street in herds. Of course, it also helped that we had an honest-to-goodness security detail (well, one guy, but he had sunglasses and a suit and a gun, so he's officially a detail) to run out and stop traffic so we could cross.

Here we have a nice inside and outside view of the Library of Alexandria. Not the one that got burned down in antiquity (but not before much of the documents inside were placed, along with the rest of the Templar treasure, in a secret chamber under Trinity church in New York City) but still cool.

Here are some nice shots of sunset over the Mediterranean. It was gorgeous.

 

Here are some pics from some ancient Roman ruins pretty much in the middle of the city. It's really amazing, because the modern city is built over the ancient city; whenever there's an excavation like this where they expose ancient ruins it's always in the middle of a ton of high-rise apartment buildings.

 

 Here are some more photos of a similar site:

 

 

 

 

I love the sky in that last picture. We got a tiny bit of rain here; the only rain we had on the whole trip.

Here are some pictures taken as we walked along the edge of the harbor:

 

 

 

 

The fortress you see in the last couple pictures was built over the site of the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria (one of the seven wonders of the ancient world). Here are some shots from the inside:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Yeah, I got a little picture-happy there.

And now we move on to the Serapeum (temple for the god Serapis), complete with Ginormous Column.

 

 

Yup, biiiiig column. There were lots of cats wandering around, so of course they had to photographed too.

It was at this point (day 5, I think) that I FINALLY got my suitcase back. Maggie the Google was very pleased:

Early the next morning we began our journey back to Cairo and Giza. On the way we stopped at a cool monastery:

And we had a nice little photo op with a super cute old monk. He told us to email him a copy--he was pretty cool.

What is this, you say? Finally, a picture with me in it? Yes, it's true.

Now we get to the really cool part: the pyramids and the Sphinx. You can't really tell from pictures, but these things are HUGE. It's absolutely mind-boggling that people built these things without modern machinery.

 

Here's a nice one of all our professors. They're a pretty cool bunch:

And, here's Maggie in front of the Great Pyramid. She was pretty excited.

 

Here are some more, because it's one of those things you just can't stop taking pictures of:

 

 

 

And, of course, here's me, being a tacky tourist:

And a couple of the Sphinx for good measure:

 

 

This is of me in the Egyptian Boat Museum, which is a weird little building crammed right between the pyramids and the sphinx. You have to wear fun slippers over your shoes to help keep dust out. Also, get used to this pose: for some reason I decided to use it for every photo of me on this trip (oops).

 Here's some more of Maggie. She asked Ancient Egyptian Santa for a pony and world peace.

 

 

That last one is her actually on the Great Pyramid. For a platypus-thingy with no arms, she's a pretty good climber.

My last look:

Now you may think that pretty much nothing could top that. And you'd be pretty much right. Except for this: me dressed as a Slytherin!

Hint: I'm in the middle of the back row. This was taken inside a mosque in Cairo; they made all the women put on these super cool green bathrobes and cover our heads. Our (male) professors and classmates thought this was the funniest thing they'd ever seen, so there are numerous pictures of us in green mode. The mosque itself was beautiful; very peaceful and relaxing.

Here's my favorite pic from that day:

I look SO excited. Not sure what Joey is doing there.

So that's about everything from Egypt. Up next: photos of Rome!