The Road to Alexandria
Trip Start
May 09, 2005
1
42
53
Trip End
Aug 01, 2005
Alexandria,
Egypt
Thursday, July 14, 2005
The road to Alexandria was just like any road you might see in America, with a few exceptions. The highway was very clean and efficient, although with cars disobeying the lane lines painted (as usual). They do actually have laws of the road, one being a 100km/hour speed limit. What they do is radar along the way and then every so often there are police checkpoints where they check license plate numbers and pull you off to the side if you were caught. Well, we were caught! Our driver got our speeding ticket even though he tried to argue his way out of it claiming he'd done 100 the whole way. But no such luck. The only other thing that reminds you that you are in fact in Egypt is that along the highway are donkey carts pulling goods. It was also weird because we'd be in the middle of nowhere and then there'd be random Egyptians waiting alongside the freeway trying to flag down a ride. But overall the drive reminded me of the Central Valley in California.
Anyways, Anwar and I left bright and early Thursday morning to catch a service taxi to Alexandria. These are basically microbuses that are a bit cheaper, faster, and more comfortable than the big buses. I was excited that Anwar had thought to use this instead and was singing his praise.
Harbor view from our hotel room
That was until I realized that since these are primarily used by local Egyptians, they don't exactly drop you in the 'tourist' area of your destination; and Alexandria is quite a large city. So we were dropped out in who knows where and wasted another hour or so trying to catch taxis to the main tourist area which is the Eastern Harbor. Another mode of transportation are these same service taxis (usually a Toyota minivan) that run along a straight route. They drive with the sliding door open and people hop in and out when they like. It was interesting for me to watch the people along the side of the road throwing out different hand signals indicating which destination/route they were looking for. In all, I counted about 10 different ones but I'm sure there are a lot more.So we made our way to the main bus station in order to buy our ticket for Siwa on Friday. This was necessary because one of the stops on the way to Siwa was in Matrouh, a hugely popular beach spot with Egyptians. We got two of the last seats on the Friday morning bus. Eventually we got to the main hotel area on the corniche. Travel tip for everyone: don't arrive in a new city on an empty stomach! We were both starving and when I'm hungry I get cranky and easily angered. I had done my research and wanted to go to a certain hotel, but the problem was that we couldn't find the door to it! So we went to the Union Hotel which was a bit pricey but we didn't care at that moment.
This brings us to our next hurdle: Egyptian man+Western woman=problems.
The Eastern Harbor
They haven't quite grasped the concept of mixed couples traveling together in Egypt and it's highly problematic. We had a Dahab marriage contract with us so that we wouldn't run into problems. No matter what nationality you are (I think the only exception is two Western people together), you must show proof of marriage in order to stay in a hotel together. The woman at reception wasn't having it and even when I asked to give us two separate rooms she wouldn't allow us to stay there. Sigh. So we dragged our sulking asses out to a cafe where I was planning to sit and pout. A man came up and told Anwar he could find us a hotel to accept the contract and he was true to his word. Just two blocks over we found a mom and pop operation that took the contract and we got a room with a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean Sea; all for almost half the price the other hotel wanted for a crap room.That was just the beginning of what hassle we would encounter traveling together. At every turn we were having to pay bribes to the tourism police to allow us to enter into places together and Anwar was detained on several occassions for questioning. They never once bothered to simply ask me if I was with him by choice and just let it be.
Ok, now I'll move on to another blog to detail what our time in Alexandria was like...
