It’s a free day in Alexandria with nothing scheduled until the evening. But some decide they want to go into town via the hotel shuttle and catch a few sights they’ve read about in their guidebooks. Word spreads and ultimately the entire group decides to go.
When our guide gets wind of the plan from one of the group at breakfast, he hustles out to the front of the hotel just as we’re boarding the shuttle. He seems offended that we didn’t ask him to take us. No amount of explanation about spontaneous plans or respecting his and the driver’s time off will mollify him – he and the driver are here to serve us and are going to drive us and guide us wherever we want to go, period.
We decamp from the shuttle and pile onto our bus. And, unintentionally, this is where the outing becomes a bit of a minor “incident.”
Because of the transitional nature of the political situation in Egypt, certain precautions are being taken, particularly it seems, as concerns American tourists. Less because we’re more vulnerable than others, I discern, than because we’re more of a political liability should anything happen to us. With apologies to our northern neighbors, as our guide says, “If you were Canadian… nobody care.”
So when sightseeing in and around Cairo and Alexandria, a plainclothes policeman with two automatic weapons underneath his suit jacket has accompanied us everywhere we go. I’ve also noticed a lot of paper-signing with white-uniformed tourist police when arriving and departing from hotels and at each site we visit.
Because nothing’s been arranged in advance, there is no guard to accompany us today, which sets off some alarm bells with the tourist police at the hotel. Our guide is apparently required to disclose our destinations and sign things avowing his taking responsibility for us.
Our first stop is the new Library of Alexandria, opened in 2002 and a unique piece of modern architecture. Sadly, we’re unable to tour it as we’d hoped, because the employees are on strike! The women who usually act as guides apologize profusely and explain what’s happening – it’s a mini-repeat of the recent revolution, demanding better treatment and the ouster of the Library’s management. We wish them success and enjoy the architecture and this taste of the new empowered spirit in Egypt.
Strike signs at the Alexandria Library
Meanwhile, the tourist police have called our tour operator to alert him that we’re out and about officially unescorted. The tour operator calls our guide to say, “You’re a professional; how could you take them out without proper procedures?” to which our guide responds, “They were going anyway, so better they go with me on the bus than on their own.” The tour operator apparently agrees, but asks to speak to me. He respectfully explains we should always let them know our plans in advance – just as a precaution in light of the current political situation, that’s all.
No one seems to get the spontaneous decision-making behind the “plan” (nor the non-compliant nature of freedom-loving Americans) and we start to jokingly refer to ourselves, not without some pride, as “the rogue American tourist group.”
If anything in Egypt is remarkably efficient, it’s the security apparatus. It seems the tourist police have called ahead to their colleagues at all our intended stops. By the time we arrive at the Alexandria National Museum, the police are expecting us and “cover” us as we exit the bus. (At the same time, they don’t seem overly concerned about the several busloads of people on cruise excursions milling about; but perhaps they’re just Europeans.)
The museum is a well-curated set of exhibits that details the various influences – Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Coptic Christian and Islamic – on this cosmopolitan city. We tour it briefly and then we’re off to the Roman amphitheater, which is nicely intact and next to an ongoing excavation of the site of the Roman baths. There’s a certain “yes, that’s us” exchange between our guide and the police as we arrive there.
The Roman Amphitheater
To complete what’s become a multi-cultural day, we have a photo stop at Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue, the only synagogue left in Alexandria. (An article in Wikipedia claims there are less than 100 Jews in all of Egypt today.) We shoot between the bars of a locked gate, behind and in front of which there is fairly heavy security. Some negotiating on the guide’s part has allowed us to photograph, as normally – surprise! surprise! – permission must be secured in advance.
The Only Synagogue in Alexandria
It’s easier to walk to our next stop than take the bus, which will meet us elsewhere where there’s adequate parking. Seemingly from nowhere, three armed plainclothesmen appear to escort us – one in front and two at our backs — to the Coptic Christian Cathedral. The building is new, but it was on the same site that St. Mark founded the first Christian church in Alexandria in 60 A.D. and from which his body was stolen by the Venetians in 828 A.D. and placed in St. Mark’s Basilica. (His head remained in Alexandria, though it’s been lost now for a few centuries.) After that, we do a walk-through of the ground floor of the 1929 British-occupation-era Cecil Hotel, now a Sofitel.
Inside the Coptic Christian Cathedral
For a rogue tourist group on the lam in Alexandria, we have a rather banal end to our adventure. We stop for lunch at a shopping mall, where we get a taste of the most recent foreign invasion – American-style fast food in the food court. While I’m having an individual Pizza Lopez Sausage at a place called Pizza Queen (that’s Lopez as in Jennifer; the DeNiro, the Cruise and others are also on the menu) our guide – who’s almost fluent by now in gay self-deprecating humor – walks up and says “We have the Burger King and the Pizza Queen; I should have known I’d find you in this one.”
