Monday, March 25th, 2019
This morning we visited the Bibliotheca Alexandrina which opened in 2002 and replaces Alexandria’s ancient library. The architecture is modern and it is the shape of a large, angled discus. The library’s exterior walls are made of granite and the walls are carved with letters, pictograms, heiroglyphs and symbols.
The main reading room is quite impressive.
Four museums are permanent fixtures and there is a planetarium and other exhibitions.
This is one of the museums in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Our guide gave us a quick demonstration of the website the Bibliotheca Alexandrina has created a fantastic website with over 3 million free books on the web! It is a resource worth checking out, https://www.bibalex.org!
Our next stop was the Citadel of Qaitbay which was built on the exact place where the Lighthouse of Alexandria( one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) stood. Several different earthquakes destroyed the lighthouse. Some of the stones from the lighthouse were used to build the Citadel.
Below are a couple of pictures taken on the second level.
Watch out below! The oil fallout hole! Read the sign below and you’ll understand.
There were some incredible views from the second level of the Citadel looking out at the Mediterranean and the city of Alexandria!
Even in Egypt, on our way to the restaurant we saw a Pizza Hut delivery person and they weren’t delivering in a car! 🙂
Our lunch was at a restaurant called the Fish Market. It was very good! The bread was made fresh in the restaurant!
After our late lunch we returned to our hotel and many of us wanted to cross the street from our hotel and put our feet in the Mediterranean! The hotel informed us that it was too dangerous to cross the roadway so they provided a van that transported us in groups to Hilton’s beach!
The temperature was in the 60s with still breezy conditions so we didn’t swim in the sea but we did take off our shoes, roll up our pants and enjoyed the surf! One person got caught off-guard by a wave and did “swim” in the water!
We did leave our mark in the sand!
