Hypatia Returns

In choosing a username for this blog back in May, I settled upon Hypatia for her significance as an important, learned Egyptian woman. Hypatia (350-415 AD) was a librarian of the great library of Alexandria, and a distinguished scholar in philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy. She opposed Christian influence in this Greco-Egyptian city, and abhorred that the Christians destroyed most scientific scrolls (some say as many as 500,000) in the library for their anti-Christian content.  In tandem with the library, she was also attacked by a Christian mob and brutally killed for being pagan. Historians praise her scholarship above the men of her time, and her death was parallel with the end of the Classical era.
 Because of my connection with Hypatia, I felt that it was appropriate that I, the modern Hypatia, travel to Alexandria to see the library and to experience the city that was the seat of Greco-Roman culture in Egypt.
I brought my mother along for the ride, and we embarked on our journey by train, which turned out to be a terrible experience. I'm not sure how to pinpoint the worst part of our train trip, whether it was the choking fumes in the train station, the unfriendly eyes of hundreds of Upper Egyptians staring at us, the only non-Egyptians in the station, the decay of the train itself, the bag attendant who held our suitcase hostage for 40 LE, the blasting air conditioning, the unusable bathroom, or the fact that my window was so caked in dirt that I could not see the landscape outside. Let me conclude by saying that we were in first class. Yes, that's right, FIRST CLASS. This makes me shudder to think of the situation for regular Egyptians.

The beautiful view from my window 

About three miserable hours later we arrived at our destination, chose a taxi driver at the station, and headed to our hotel. We zipped past the Roman monuments (and later the new library of Alexandria), which were few and far between, and found ourselves on the Corniche, a street running parallel to the Mediterranean Sea. I am pleased to announce that the Mediterranean is as beautiful a deep blue in Egypt as it is elsewhere. The city itself is not very impressive, because the buildings are weathered to a negligible level. However, the saving grace of Alexandria is that it has greenery, very little garbage, and fresh air. Most of the Alexandrians we talked to despise Cairo, and I can understand why. Who would want to live in the sprawling polluted mess of Cairo when you can live in the comfortable, beautiful, and clean Alexandria?
When we arrived at our hotel, the Sheraton Montazah Gardens, which is situated about 25 km from the city center, we were even more pleased with our choice of vacation destination. The view from our hotel room balcony was spectacular! We could see the gardens of King Farouk across the street and the edge of the Mediterranean.

 

 

The Montazah Gardens

After a rest from our tiring journey, we braved the traffic (as in we had to run across four lanes of fast-moving cars) to visit the gardens. It was already night time, so we couldn't see or experience the flora and fauna of the place. Instead we experienced the joys of street harassment yet again. I'm not one to blame the girl for what she is wearing, but I did knowingly walk out at night with a skirt that was shorter than knee length in Egypt. I anticipated some trouble, but I am not taking responsibility for their lewd behavior. We shooed away the adolescent perpetrators, and hurried to an American restaurant which was filled with wealthy Alexandrians. For the rest of the evening, we sat, ate, and watched the cars go by from our terrace seating. The highlight of our 'people watching' was a car driving at 25 miles per hour with a seven-year-old child sitting precariously on the hood. Welcome to Egypt.
After our dinner, we decided not to visit our hotel's discoteque for a drink, which was probably a good idea because it was most likely crawling with muscle shirt-wearing creepy Egyptian guys looking to prey upon drunk American women. This is what I'm making up, but it's more than plausible.
This morning we decided to order continental breakfast in bed while watching cheesy Egyptian soap operas. At around 10 am, we toured the gardens again, and found them to be absolutely breathtaking. We also wandered over to King Farouk's palace which is a symbol of a bygone era of colonialism. Then we gathered our things and sat for three hours at our hotel's private beach under a cabana. I fell asleep to the sound of the waves, and was revived an hour later by the feel of the sea breeze on my face.

Heaven

To top this lovely experience, Mom and I sat on the water's edge at our hotel's cafe, and enjoyed a nice lunch before leaving Alexandria for Cairo by private car. We, the princesses that we are, decided that the private car was a good deal because the train sucks, and the chauffer service was about 1/5 of the price of an American car transport. The drive took about four hours (which is an hour longer than the train), but our driver was very attentive and sweet, and delivered us safely back to our apartment. The overall experience of Alexandria was very refreshing, and if our hotel room had been available for another night, we would have stayed. Sadly, this was not the case, because it was Eid weekend and the hotel was completely booked. Hypatia returned to the beauty of her native city, but had to leave it again too soon.