Another Wonder of the Ancient World

Yawn--another morning on little sleep, but we had to be up early to catch a train to fabled Alexandria.  The second class was like first--wide seats and good air conditioning, and we had a comfortable ride all the way.  Getting tickets is quite a hassle--you go the day before and you push your way to the front of a "line," while ticket availability fluctuates dramatically minute to minute.  Perhaps it is the broken English-Arabic exchange because I am willing to bet they don't have a dynamically updating system in place.  We haggled for a while and secured tickets back from Alex (they hadn't been available the day before) and then walked to the library.  The library of Alexandria burned down long long ago, and with it, many valuable texts, but a modern library has been rebuilt, with an effort to establish a world-best reservoir of scientific texts.  It is a terrific building--enormous--a capacity for two thousand people at a time, with free internet, and a nifty machine that will print your manuscript into a book in an hour.  So if you want to be published by the Alex press, that's where you go.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria, a wonder of the ancient world, fell down a long time ago also, but in its place is a citadel--a castle in white stone on the edge of blue water, and it was quite worth the visit.  On the way I stopped for a nut and honey pastry which was very good--sweets in the Arab world are an excellent treat.  Then we took a ride around in a horse drawn carriage, grabbed some fresh garbanzo beans from a vendor, and got a recommendation from a local for a good meat place.  And was it good.  You order by the kilo--I ate nearly a half kilo, of lamb and kofta perfectly grilled, served with hummus, tahina, cucumber, tomato, and mint salad, and roasted eggplant.  I was good friends with these people my the time I left, my fingers still covered in lime pulp after squeezing a mountain of juice onto the meat.  Good food makes me terrifically happy.

Big library, ex-lighthouse, great meat