We arrived in Alexandria after a midnight flight to Cairo and a three hour van ride over roads that had sand drifted on them from the sand storm earlier that day.  We woke to a beautiful view of Mediterranean from our hotel window.  To our right are the grounds of King Farouk’s former summer palace.  The ornate buildings shown in the pictures are the 1920s Italian style palace buildings.  Great to be here after the 40°C weather in Luxor.  At noon we started our exploration of Alexandria.  

We drove to the older section of the city and visited the old Roman catacombs that date from 200-400 AD.  Here they stashed mummified and cremated bodies.  Sorry but no pictures allowed there.  Then on to Pompeys Pillar which was erected on 330 AD to honor the Roman Emperor Diocletian who, after laying siege to Alexandria, spared the inhabitants.  Its hard to understand how they could create and erect such a tall round pillar (2.7 M dia x 27 m high).  The name got changed to Pompey over the centuries.  Next was a visit to the Citadel of Qaitbay, a fort on the entrance to the harbor.  The Citadel was built by the Arab governor Qaitbay to defend the city against a attack from the sea.  The only time it saw any action was in a battle years later against the British navy in 1882 when they came to Egypt to quell nationalist unrest that threatened their hold on the Suez canal.  France and Britain only wanted Egypt for the Suez Cannel.  The rest of the country they left to the Arab kings.  The Citadel was built on the ruins of the old Lighthouse of Alexandria and used some of the old lighthouse stones.  The lighthouse was one of the wonders of the old world.  After lunch we drove through the Summer Palace grounds.  The last Arab king was over thrown by a revolution in the 1950s when Egypt became a democracy.  The grounds now house several resort hotels with expensive day suites for the beach goers.  Then back to the hotel so we would have time to update the blog.  Even though this hotel has a new wireless system, its bandwidth does not let us do anything more than send/receive email.  Even after Jerry worked with one of the wireless company engineers we could not upload pictures so we are now three days behind in updating the blog.