In which our heroine recounts her final adventures in Egypt

Before I get to the blog there are two announcements:
*Welcome to the world Benjamin Edward Truman Underwood, and congratulation to Elizabeth, Walter, Ethan and Daniel.*
*Hello to Rachel Hoebeke in Japan and Amy Hoebeke in Austria from Erika Day in Egypt*

Today was our last day in Egypt, it was really too bad to only have two days in Alexandria. I don't know why we didn't just have this as our main port for Egypt and launch trips to Cairo from here, maybe too expensive, who knows.

Last night a group of us walked and found a place to eat, there aren't very many restaurants in Alexandria, believe it or not. The place we ended up "Tikka" was not very good. Everything was deep fried, and not in a particularly flavorful way. It gave me indigestion. We walked around some after that, and talked to some people. When we got back to the ship four bus loads of Semester at Sea students zoomed past us right at the gate. Barbie and Ashley will know what this means. It means "You ain't gettin' on the ship." Each of their enormous bags has to be searched for contraband, and all of them have to have an argument about whether or not they get to bring their hookah on board.

So to kill time, Kelly and I walked around and looked at the other big ships that were docked near us. This is the first time since Japan that we've been in a port with other big passenger ships nearby. The ship right across from ours, the MSC Opera, looked about 4 times bigger than ours. We talked to some people from the crew and they said it held 2,000, but it looked like it could hold 3 or 4 easily. It was apparent after a little while that this ship was getting ready to take off. There were a lot of passengers out on deck and people milling about the gangway. A lady came running up with a bag and jumped on the ship, they pulled up the gangway and within 2 minutes they were headed out. I yelled "BYE!" and started waving, and everyone on deck started waving back. It was just the two of us to their 100 wavers, so we were very tired seeing them off. After that we walked down to the ship that was behind theirs. It was a teeny tiny passenger ship, much smaller than ours. They had a lounge singer up on their top deck singing "Proud Mary" and "Waterloo." Hank Kennedy has a theory that there's a international songlist of tunes like "People" and "Delilah" and these are all you're allowed to sing or you get your international lounge singer license revoked.* We talked to some people who were getting off this ship and they said they were headed home to Toronto, that the ship had come from Istanbul and was headed to Bahrain next. That the ship never stops it just cruises around and around and people get on and off wherever it is and can stay on as long as their funding holds out. Sounds like a great premise for a TV show, huh?

There were three parts to the day today:

Part the first
Sally and I left the ship around 11:00 to walk around and do some shopping. She was hoping to find some nice Egyptian cotton shirts and I was hoping to find the yarn store, fabled for it's bounty and cheapness. We walked to the market and went into a shop selling coffee and bought a few bags, then we saw a big Christian church and I wanted to go look at it, so we walked up, but it was surrounded by a wall with guards. We asked if we could go in and they said, "Yes, yes" but the church was closed because they were cleaning it. But the guard told us it was the patriarchate for the Greek Orthodox Church in Egypt which is probably why there were so many guards. Then he took us across the street to another church which was Catholic. We went inside and were looking around, but the guy who was working there told us to follow him, he said "French, Italian, German?" I said "English" he said "Oh, no English" and just talked to us in French instead. I understood enough to know that the tiny room with the weird coffin containing a lit up dead lady was supposedly the real dead body of Saint Sabina. Catholic.org doesn't say anything about her real dead body being in a church in Alexandria, and it did look a little waxy, but who the heck am I to say anything about it? Then the guy gave us an en francais tour of the church and I gave him 50 EL and he was happy. After that I was starving so we walked around and found a little tea shop and ordered coffee and something to eat. The lady said "gatteaux?" Which I know is French for cake and I said "Oui." and she said "Chocolate?" and I said "Oui" and so I came to have chocolate cake and coffee for lunch and was glad of it. When we left there we started to head back toward the ship and almost immediately came upon the yarn store. It was as bountiful and cheap as I'd heard and I bought 4 skeins of yarn and a pair of needles for 25LE which is about $5. I went back to the ship and Sally continued to walk around.

Part the second
Back at the ship I met up with Mary and Kelly and we hailed a cab to take us back to the Library of Alexandria. Because.... Mary arranged for us to get our very own private super-secret librarian tour of the library. Our guide was the librarian for Business, though she was a subject specialist and didn't have an MLS. The people with MLSs work in cataloging she said. She told us about their internet policy: Free for an hour and you can get another hour if you want. Circulation: None, unless they have four copies of the book (so none). Collection size: 500,000 but capacity is 10,000,000. Budget woes: Most funds come from private donations from other governments. Printing policy, copier policy, most frequently asked questions, etc. etc. She took us to the children's library where most adults aren't allowed in, not even parents. To the Arts and Media Library where they have viewing rooms and a piano made out of books. She was with the three of us for an hour and a half. She was so nice, and we really had a fun time. She gave us her email and I hope she wants to keep in touch with us, because how cool would it be to have a friend at the Library of Alexandria. There were a lot of people from the ship there and everyone had some crack to make about librarians at the library. I think my blood sugar must have been messed up because every time someone we knew said a word to me I wanted to punch them in the mouth. Mary is very very popular with the students and EVERYONE wanted to talk to Mary and she had a cold and wasn't feeling well and couldn't have been sweeter, but I thought I was going to have a freak out right there in public.



Part the third
I didn't freak out, though. And Mary and Kelly saw the wisdom in getting me to food ASAP. I'm sorry to say we went to McDonald's. But it was delicious and it was full of Egyptians and Kelly had something called the McArabia (which was like a gyro) so don't be to harsh on us. What's better, to go to an Egyptian place that's full of tourists because the locals can't afford it, or just to go for the Quarter Pounder? At any rate, I felt much happier after that and we walked around some really cool streets and managed to find ourselves back at the yarn store, and I bought 68LE worth. Just then I started feeling like I had to go to the bathroom in an emergency kind of way, but the feeling passed pretty soon and we decided just to head for the ship. Then, when we were so close I could almost see the port, it came upon me again only this time there was no denying. So I ran into what I think was someone's house maybe, but they let me use their bathroom which was just a hole but I was terribly grateful. I think they could see the desperation in my eyes.

We were suppose to leave for Istanbul tonight, but Captain Roman just announced that due to bad weather they've closed the port. So we're going to sit here until tomorrow, and then maybe the weather will improve. Hmmm, so I don't know what that means for getting to Turkey. Also I was told it's going to not get above the mid-50's the entire time we're in Istanbul, so I think we're skipping fall and going directly to winter. Which I guess I shouldn't complain since summer lasted till November 4th.


*When we were at the Rex Hotel bar the act played the song "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" and I thought that was pretty funny so I took a short video of them. Then when we were on the Nile dinner cruise this guy who looked like Borat sang "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You," and I snagged some video of him too. So if I can get just one more before the trip is over then I'll have a collection of international lounge singers doing that song.