We got on the bus to begin our 4-5 hour drive to Alexandria. The bus ride was the same as the others, lots of talking, napping, games on phones, and driving. When we got to Alexandria we hit traffic again. Not as bad as Cairo, at least not on the main roads. We made it all the way to the coast where we took the perpendicular road to get to our hotel.

The hotel is self was a little scary. There was some kind of military outpost beneath us with many men in uniform with guns. There were doorways that look to lead to alleyways in the middle of the building, filled with feral cats. And the elevator. It had a large metal gate you had to open and the elevator had two wooden doors, only one of which needed to be closed for the elevator to work. In fact when we arrive one of the doors was open and the elevator couldn’t be called so we had to yell up the elevator shaft for someone to close the door so the elevator would come down. We later discovered that if you opened the door that needed to be closed during the ride the elevator would stop where it was until you closed the door again, when it would then return to the ground floor. We mostly took the stairs.

Once you got upstairs there were many stuffed animals. I don’t mean the cute and cuddly kind but the hunted and shot dead kind. Mostly different types of birds that were being preserved. It was really creepy. There were a number of rooms on the same floor as reception, luckily I was on the floor above and there were no dead animals in our sitting area.

Most of the rooms in this hotel were right on the main street. This lead to much noise, but absolutely beautiful views right over the harbour. From our windows we could see the old Fort that was built where the lighthouse once stood. And we could see the roof of the new Library of Alexandria.

We had free time after we arrived. I went with Jed, Maddy, and Niko for a walk along the cornice to the library. We were able to get in for free and go to the bookshop. I bought a couple books about Egypt to help me remember some of the many things we learned about the places we visited.

We went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. For dinner we walked into the area by our hotel that had lots of different types of restaurants. On the way back to the hotel we stopped by the bottle shop called “Drinkies”, to get some drinks. Outside the shop was a little street vendor with snacks. I noticed they had sunflower seeds. We had been spending the entire trip looking for something we could use as poker chips and could only come up with cookies and other yummy things to eat. The seeds were perfect because they were many in a bag.

When we got back to the hotel a number of us went up to the fourth floor sitting are and took some seeds and our drinks and cards and began a long, long poker night. By the end of the night we were starting to go all in to make the game end. The only important thing is that after spending some time at the bottom I rose to come out on top and beat everyone, getting all my seeds back. Next time I play it’s for money.