Egypt Has a Mediterranean City?? Alexandria!

Egypt Has a Mediterranean City?? Alexandria!

When you think of Egypt, you probably pictured the pyramids, ancient tombs, and the desert. But what’s wild is that Egypt also has a completely different side that you might not even know about. This is Alexandria, a Mediterranean city full of history, iconic things to see, and a completely different food scene. My favorite meal in Egypt and arguably in this whole 2 and 1/2 week trip. That’s where I’m at. Don’t eat that much in like 3 weeks. legit. So, we’re here to see how it compares to what we’ve seen so far in Egypt. We are super curious about this place cuz it’s coastal and we love that. But our first impressions arriving were fairly intense. And as you can see, it’s also pretty bloody hectic. Go, go, go, go, go. It’s almost more European in these side streets. Very small, but there’s definitely a charm. And then we arrived at our hotel, which is pretty iconic and historic. And then there’s a sentence here that says, “It’s a place where timeless elegance meets legendary stories.” And look at this lift. It’s about as ancient as the building, I think. Look, the cable just hangs out. One of those stories is that the hotel claims that it is the land where Cleopatra grew up and once lived and used to hang out with Julia Caesar. I have no idea if that’s factually correct, but it sounds pretty cool. All the rooms look so grand. Looks like we’re in a museum. It does. It does a little bit. Never slept in a museum before. This is open. So hopefully this is now. Can’t see anything. Hang on. I’m assuming there’s no key card because it’s a little bit old. Oh, it’s like a palace. Smells vintage. I think Cleopatra might be in herself. She might be under the bed. Do we have a window or is that just decoration? Maybe. I don’t think we have ever slept in anything so you know historic. It’s quite modded in here. I didn’t expect that. Very nice shower. Do a little bounce test. Shot back up to the ceiling with the old spring. There’s high ceilings, too. Oh, class. Well used. Okay. So, the rooms are not exactly our uh our style. That’s okay. But the rooftop and seeing the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt and just being coastal again. Yeah. Like connection to Egypt, uh, sorry, connection to Europe, which we haven’t been to in so long. I mean, I looked at this. I knew this was going to be beautiful, but I do not think I was prepared for that. But you’re right into the sun. Look at that sign. Now, now my eyes are right into the sun. It’s beautiful. It’s stunning. Wow. Well, being up here and seeing this view, you could understand why. If it is true what they say about Cleopatra, she wanted the best spot with the best views looking out across the harbor and what I think was the lighthouse. Maybe it’s a little bit more believable about here, but this place is historic as well. Even just the bar, the restaurant. Alexandria sits just a few hours north of Cairo on the Mediterranean coast, Egypt’s second largest city. And in case you were wondering, yep, it was literally named after Alexander the Great, who founded it in 331 BC. A lot of travelers do seem to miss Alexandria heading south instead for more temples and tombs. So, we were stoked to find that our 12-day G Adventures tour did actually stop here so we could share it with you. Our guide say actually told us that this would be his dream city to live in. Cooler weather, seab breeze, way less chaos, and of course, the seafood. So, it’s pretty convincing really. There’s crazy amounts of history to explore as well, including the most famous catacombs in all of Egypt. We’re going to start with the catacombs or some beautiful late Greek tombs and then some Roman ones. They are all in the same place, guys. So, once we once they open, let’s go directly to the main tomb. Let’s try to beat up the crowd. All right, we’re going down into the catacombs now. Hey, look at this. Oh, wow. Apparently, the way that they found this place was a donkey fell down the shaft, which like shouldn’t be funny. This poor donkey, but it’s also kind of funny. Like the fact that they found this incredible something just disappearing under the ground. There was a I mean, assuming not this staircase unless they had some really nice modern woods back in the day, but yeah, then they found a spiral staircase. Started working the way down and realized, oh my gosh, there’s a whole tomb down here. Catacombs and all. Oh, it’s really impressive. This is the main tomb guys. One started almost 100 BC. From looking at the art which we have here, it’s almost 100 BC. Guys, something interesting about these tombs is that they were all found empty. They think that maybe it was a distraction. Stop the tomb raiders coming in here trying to trying to rob all the goods, but there was actually nothing in here, but there’s supposed to be a spot for the main owner of the tomb as well as his wife and family. But he ain’t here. Not sure where he is. And you can see the styling is all unique as well. It’s a real mixture of Egyptian as well as Greek. Funerals happened in the place which we are in. Remember the dining room. We’re going to talk about it. But is believed that they could hold about 300 bodies down here. So when they discovered this place, they didn’t find 300 bodies, but they did find a couple of bones. They found bones from horses, which apparently we’re going to see soon. But what happened was people started using this place as a shelter. M. So obviously they didn’t want to like have neighbors that were Yeah. So they got rid of the the bodies in the boat. It’s like an old school hostel. Like a Japanese pod hostel. And they’re all numbered, guys. Like you can see the numbers, right? They’re all numbered. Say loves this place. So for us, this is kind of really rewarding seeing him. He’s in his element. He’s so excited for us to enjoy this. It’s like a beautiful maze. Amazing, guys. And it actually goes deeper. Again, I think we’re lucky. We’ve come at the right time where this used to be completely underwater. You are lucky that you are coming these days, guys. If you came 2 years ago, there was like a little wooden bridge. We used to because because of the underground water, the sea water was covering this place. So, now we’re going down. It’s nice to get Oh, okay. That’s not bad. Like, we were told you’re going to have to duck and we’re like, we’re going to crawl and then put it on a sledge and then keep pulling and pulling and pulling and taking it to the burial chamber. Oh, so the bodies would go underneath that way. Way. That way. Exactly, guys. Oh, and that’s where we were, the burial chamber. I see chamber. Okay, so you can see, guys, the water line, the water mark. And not only that, now that it’s drained. Oh, look. There are just people casually digging down there to see how much further it goes. They don’t know. And they’re just like just like they’re doing some Sunday gardening. See, see what happens. Yeah. See what we’ll find. So, who knows? Maybe in 5 years time there’ll be like come back and there’ll be more. 300 more tombs down there. Well, this is Pompei’s pillar, a Roman column named incorrectly after the Roman general Pompei. And if we’re honest, I don’t know if this is necessarily all that impressive compared to what we’ve seen on the wider trip. I think it would have been impressive back in the day. Like apparently the two Sphinx statues at the front were uh framing a temple. Yes. Not much left of the temple. Yeah. Or smoke. That’s a pillar. All right. The rest of it is up to your imagination. I wonder if AI could help us solve this and show you what it Yeah. Well, it’s pretty cool to like witness what it could have. Of course, there’ll be all sorts of errors in there, no doubt, but this is maybe what it did look like. And so now it’s more impressive for you. Pompei’s pillar is just a tiny piece of Alexandria’s history. Sadly, a lot of it’s been lost. Earthquakes, fires, and invasions destroyed a lot of records over the years, along with the building itself that was the ancient Library of Alexandria. There is now a new state-of-the-art building, though, arguably the most beautiful architecture we have ever seen inside a museum, although that is likely beaten by the new museum that has just opened up in Cairo. Yeah, boy. This is fun. So, S has told us that when we’re in Alexandria, we have to try fresh seafood. So, he’s told us about this fish alley way. Fresh Egyptian fish ali situation. Not entirely sure what to expect, but wo I mean, that found what to expect. What are we eating, though? I don’t know. I think there’s like he mentioned something about sea bass and a fish called mullet which I’ve never heard of before shrimp and calamari and I don’t know I guess it’s just going to be a mystery. I think this is the evidence that we’re about to eat is um pretty fresh. Here it is. We’re like 100 meters away from the uh from the sea. So we’ll see you soon. So we got a delicious first course of shrimp soup. Was there no shrimp? Yeah, but there’s no shrimp in it apparently. It certainly uh it certainly smells like there is or there was shrimp. Yeah, they live there for a long time. I think it’s actually it’s shrimpy, but then it settles quite quickly. Yeah, I just don’t know if I’m going to finish that. It’s fresh and tasty. No fish in there, I don’t think. All right, everybody. A whole fish just came out for everybody. So, this is going to be somewhere between trust the chef and trust the fisherman. The salad, though, unbelievable. Let’s see how this goes. It feels like we’re just getting started, but it’s already getting ridiculous. There is so much food coming out. It is non-stop. And that is the nicest fish I can remember having in seriously the longest time. But Stac is never going to get through all of that. And there’s still so much more. Hello. He says, “Hello, baby.” I think before we even talk about the food, I just want to talk about the experience of that fact that there was so much of it. Well, yeah. No, not the volume. I was just meaning in terms of we could have found somewhere along the waterfront there and there were some fancy looking places. No doubt would have been expensive. Wait till you hear the price. But then it just it felt like we we were eating with locals. It felt like a proper local experience. There was like not much order but like lots of rush and then a hell of a lot of food. I don’t know. It was just fun. I enjoyed it. One of those experiences where you have no idea what’s happening and it just turns out to be the best because it’s from a local recommendation and the food was super fresh. It was delicious. There was so much of it. Um, my favorite meal in Egypt and arguably in this whole 2 and 1/2 week trip. That’s where I’m at. I’ve seen eat that much in like 3 weeks. Legit. Legit. If we were to buy that at home with the amount that we just ate, I just ate at least 100 $120 per person. That was $400 Egyptian pounds per person, which I can’t figure out the math right now for you. Oh, it’s bloody cheap. It’s like $18, $17 or something. Included a tip from both of us as well. And a drink. And a drink. And two And two bottles of water. And the shrimp bloody juice thing soup. We’re just on a mission back to the hotel now. We had planned we asked say where is there somewhere you know we’re right we’re on the sea here where can we go where’s that sunset bezy right on the beach front and he’s like nah it’s Muslim it’s just not many places like that the hotel is going to be the best spot so you can’t really complain with the view that we’ve got up there I just want to show you shown a lot of nice looking spots but this is more of the real more of the realness of the Great. Kiss. Get those out. Way off. Way off.

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Welcome back to Egypt and this 4th vlog in the series, what a tour it’s been so far! Today we’re in our second to last spot, the Pyramids are up next, and exploring a unique part of Egypt on the coast – Alexandria.

Alexandria sits just a few hours north of Cairo on the Mediterranean Coast — Egypt’s second-largest city. And in case you’re wondering, yup, it was literally named after Alexander the Great, who founded it in 331 BC.

A lot of travellers seem to miss Alexandria and head south instead, so we were stoked to get the chance to properly check it out and see some of the tops spots like:

– The Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa
– Pompeys Pillar
– Bibliotheca Alexandrina
– What once was the Lighthouse of Alexandria
– And the bottom of a few plates of seafood!

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