20250312 Wednesday, March 12, 2025 Cairo to Alexandria

20250312 Wednesday, March 12, 2025 Cairo to Alexandria

Most of our fellow Viking Hathor passengers headed off the the Cairo airport at odd hours of the night with flights leaving from 11pm to 3am to head back to the US or on flights to Jordan for the Petra extension.  There were only 10 of us going on to Alexandria. We got to “sleep in” for a 6am breakfast and 7:15am luggage pick up.  Our transfer to Alexandria was bumped earlier to 8am from the previously scheduled 9am departure.  This appears to have been primarily due to traffic.

  
We had breakfast in the same lobby restaurant as dinner last night. This buffet was fairly par for the course for an international business class hotel.  There was an omelet/egg station, but it was manned by someone who seemed to be struggling with cracking the eggs one at a time.  Usually, the egg guy can crack them single handed for individual egg orders, or simply pour out pre-beaten eggs for omelets.  The beef and chicken sausages were pretty much the same strange tasting and super finely ground texture as those served in Cairo.  Because of the Muslim majority, there has been no pork bacon, but they have something called beef bacon, which looked nothing like bacon.  It was more likely akin to corned beef, but Ben didn’t try it.  

Beef Bacon

There were two Chinese couples on the cruise who said they had not signed up for either the Jordan or Alexandria extensions.  But it turns out they did contract with a tour provider at the Cairo Hotel to see Alexandria on their own.

We met our Alexandria tour guide Eman in the lobby and our fellow Alexandria contingent.  We had one couple from Melbourne Australia and 4 couples from the US, including us.  We boarded our same full sized Viking tour coach with just 10 passengers and headed back through the city, across the Nile, and onto Alexandria.  
Beyond the outskirts of Cairo, there is a lot of agricultural land interspersed with industrial sites including chemical fertilizer plants, refineries, frozen food processing factories and brick mills with tall smoke stacks atop individual brick kilns.  
An interesting site in the countryside were pigeon houses, which looked like giant termite mounds or bee hives.  These apparently create an artificial mountainous topography that the pigeons prefer.  The Egyptians raise the pigeons for food and also use the droppings for fertilizer.  Stuffed pigeon “Hamam Mahshi” is an Egyptian delicacy that is as much a part of a Ramadan table as Turkey is on our Thanksgiving tables.

Egyptian Pigeon Coop

The highway connecting Cairo to Alexandria is like a turnpike with toll plazas and truck stops.  There are restaurants and coffee shops at some of these.  We stopped for a bathroom break after driving for a half hour.  The main tenant was something called “House of Coffee”. They had a great trademark of “Mood Provocateur”.  As we were leaving the House of Coffee, we ran into the two Chinese couples and their little white tour van as they had just arrived for the same reason.  It’ll be interesting to see if we run into them at the tourist sites for tomorrow’s formal program.

As we headed into Alexandria, it was quite apparent that it was a more planned and organized city than Cairo.  While there is still pandemonium at some intersections, there are expressways that have tall fences dividing traffic and pedestrian overpasses to limit the rampant Jay walking seen everywhere in Cairo.  There is a large lake that runs roughly parallel to the Mediterranean Sea.  This is used primarily for agricultural irrigation purposes.  Alexandria gets most of its drinking water from the Nile.  

We drove along the Mediterranean Sea on Al Geish road to the Four Seasons Hotel.  Our bus got a thorough inspection by a man with a rolling mirror to inspect our undercarriage, and a bomb sniffing dog, before we were allowed to proceed to the hotel lobby entrance, which was tucked into the building’s facade.

The hotel appears very elegant.  We were ushered by Viking handlers and security through the lobby after having our bags X-rayed and us having to pass through a metal detector, to a little waiting area for check in.  It was a little odd because they had 8 sets of small round tables, each with 2 chairs turned as if set up for a show. 

 

It was here we were introduced to Robert, our local Viking host and concierge, and Salma, a gal from the hotel’s reception services.  They greeted us individually at our tables and collected our passports.   Hotel check in is usually 3pm, but Viking was able to get us all checked in by 12:30pm.  At about 12:45pm, there was a hotel evacuation drill by the hotel staff.  We were advised to simply ignore the alarms, but also advised that the elevators would not be functioning during the drill.

Our room was very elegantly appointed and had an amazing view of the beach and Mediterranean.  The hotel has an annex on the beach, but the hotel’s beach is closed for the winter season.  They have the sand built up as a berm to protect hotel property from storm damage.  

Shortly after getting into our room, the hotel’s alarm did go off, and we watched the hotel’s staff gather together out in front of the hotel in a parking lot across the street.  There is an underground passageway connecting the main hotel and this beachside annex, but oddly enough, no connection between the hotel and the waterfront esplanade called the Corniche other than to exit the main building’s lobby and then cross the busy street in front.  Fortunately, there is a pedestrian crosswalk and traffic light.  There is a countdown board on the traffic side warning drivers how much time they have before the crosswalk signal will change, and a 30 second countdown for pedestrians to get across the traffic.  Some cars and trucks did just accelerate and scoot through as the signal changed, but by and large, the traffic did stop and people were able to cross safely.

There are thousands of yellow and black Soviet era Lada cars that make up Alexandria’s taxi fleet.  In addition to these, Alexandria has had a trolley system since 1863, which was electrified in 1902. This was the first mass transport system in Africa.

There are also thousands of private minibuses that are extremely popular with the locals.  These seem to just pull over anywhere and passengers pile out and pile in. Nearly all are jammed to capacity.

The Corniche runs 10 miles from the Citadel of Qaitbay, built on the site of one of the 10 Ancient Wonders of the World- the Pharaoh Lighthouse of Alexandria, to the Montaza Palace.  Our hotel, the Four Seasons, is smack dab in the middle of the Corniche.  The Starbucks Coffee on the ground floor is a notable landmark on the Corniche.

We crossed the street successfully and did find a way to enter the hotel property on the beach side.  There was a security guard, but when we showed him our room cards, he waved us through.  The whole beachside complex is shut down for the season, but we did see a maintenance worker scrubbing a pathway with an industrial buffer.

There is a substantial sea wall structure built to maintain the resort’s beach, which forms a beautiful crescent.  But as we were advised, the sand has been plowed up into huge berms.  We were able to get to the beach where the sea wall meets the beach, but it was steep and the water was not looking very inviting.

We walked to the Stanley Bridge, which was the the first bridge built in Egypt spanning the Mediterranean, albeit only 400m, cutting across the mouth of a very small bay that forms a lovely beach.

We were able to cross back under the traffic at a crosswalk at the bridge, and also at a dedicated pedestrian underpass about half the distance back to the hotel.  There were vendors selling wares at either end of the underpass, but not in the part spanning the street underground.  Perhaps it was because the central part of this underpass is not lit.  It didn’t feel unsafe at all though.

Alexandria is very densely populated, making for some very dark passageways and streets between buildings.

It is curious that the Egyptians seem to have a paranoia about cameras, binoculars and telephoto lenses.  At the Pyramids of Egypt, binoculars are expressly forbidden and telephoto lenses over a poorly defined magnification range are also forbidden.  Ben was told he could not use his 200mm telephoto zoom lens, but was allowed to keep it in his camera bag.  At the Grand Egyptian Museum, they forbid his GoPro selfie handle.  Our bus had left, so Ben left the screening area, took the selfie handle out of the camera bag and into his pants.  The security people were generally ignoring the magnetometer as people came through with their cell phones in hand so Ben picked a busy line with a bunch of Japanese, tossed his camera bag on the conveyor belt, waltzed through the magnetometer, and then grabbed the camera bag as it came out of the X-ray, and jogged to catch up with the rest of the group.  Today, as we walked the Corniche, there was a shopping Pier with a Krispy Kreme on the street end.  When we attempted to take a selfie, a guard came up a made it very clear no photography was allowed.  Since Ben had his camera bag with him, we couldn’t even take a stroll down the shopping pier.  Oh well.

We had logged a bit over 3.25 miles walking around the resort and down to the Stanley Bridge, so we rested up a bit in the room and enjoyed the sunset from our balcony.  

We then went to the food court of the mall attached to the back of the hotel.  It is a huge mall, and quite busy.  We couldn’t resist the lure of KFC, which had 4 pieces of chicken, roll, Cole slaw, fries and a drink for just 280EGP, which is just $5.53 USD.  The food court had at least 4 burger establishments including Mc Donalds and Burger King.  Other food outlets included shawarma and kabob, pizza, Chinese wok, coffee and dessert places.  

Surprising number of lingerie shops in this Muslim country but what happens in the bedroom is nobody's business

It was so busy, there were no chairs or table open, so we did take out and ate on our deck.  It was amazing the transformation of the beach area after nightfall.  Everyone was at home breaking their Ramadan fasting so there was almost no vehicle traffic on the street below.

We didn’t end up running into the other group of Viking travelers.  Ben got a text from one of them who said they were at the Hilton, which is clear at one end of the strip, while the Four Seasons is in the middle.

Our tour begins in earnest tomorrow.  We meet our guide at 9am.  After such a lot of hustling and bustling, it was nice to actually have a little downtime at this hotel today. Tomorrow will be busy, but our departure flights are late the next day, so we’ll essentially have a full free day on Friday.  Our Viking host tells us most museums will be closed for Ramadan though, so we may just make it a day to hang out around the pool and relax.