Pigeon and Duck, or Day 9 of the Epic May Adventure

I get to write this from the Bibliotheca Alexandria. The original library. Like, how cool is this?

So, if you haven't guessed, today was our day trip to Alexandria. We took an easy 8am train, got here at 10:45, and have been wandering the city ever since. I got this cute little guide to Alexandria that has a map in it, so we've been following that. However, the scale of the map was a bit deceptive...

We started at the train station, and across the street was the Roman ruins of a odeum. The city was about 30 meters lower than it is now, so the highest level of the small theater was below even street level. They were still doing excavations at the site, and one of the workers saw me taking pictures. He made hand motions for me to take a picture of him, so now I have some random guy with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and posing by his wheelbarrow on my camera. Classy.

Next, the map said about four blocks down, and three blocks over, and we'd be at this library. However, those "four blocks"? About a kilometer.

Thankfully, we had chatted with one of Abdalla's old uni friends about seeing her today, so she called and suggested we look at the Qaitbay Fort before meeting up with her for lunch.

We hopped in a taxi to the Fort, and, with a wonderful, sweet sea breeze, poked around the fort and the walls around it. It was probably about 25C (80F) if not chillier! It was my first look at the Mediterranean Sea. Boys were splashing around in it, men were fishing in it, and us tourists were looking at it from on top of the wall surrounding the fort.

We met up with the friend at these gardens surrounding the summer palace of the President. It was a gorgeous green area, very posh, and our meal was huge and "expensive" (by Egyptian standards... it really only cost about $26 for the three of us.)

We were talking about street food during this meal, since the hawawshi that I had a few nights ago that I loved can be a bit dangerous if bought on the street. The meat could be dog or donkey or whatever else they could grind up.

I heard mention that Egyptians like to eat pigeon, so I mentioned this to them. Both agreed, and didn't even blink an eye. Until I told them that pigeons are considered one of the dirtiest creatures in the U.S. "Flying rats," people call them. They had apparently never heard this before. In fact, they told me, pigeons were a delecacy, similar to how us Americans view ducks. This was amusing to me since when they order a pigeon, it apparently comes with duck too (since one pigeon just isn't enough). We mused about different cultures and their "dirty" animals for a while as we ate our Alexandrian seafood.

Our next stop was here, the Bibliotheca Alexandria, built about 200 meters to the east of the original Library of Alexandria. (The original location is underwater.) It is a modern building, built by a Swedish design firm, with one of the largest open reading rooms in the world. It is a tilted disk with seven floors of chairs and desks and computers (of which, I'm on one). And it, like most other things in Egypt, is filled with people.

The plan for tonight is to go out and watch sunset from near here, then catch the train back at 10:15 to return to Cairo. Insh'allah.