1W5D “Alexandria, princess and whore. The royal city and the anus mundi.” –Lawrence Durrell

Four days, three middle of the night passport checkpoints , two relaxing days in Alexandria, and one 12 grueling hour bus ride later I am finally in Dahab. More on this later.

Departing from Cairo in the morning on Wednesday, I arrived into Alexandria at around noon and made my way to the Shultz American School successfully bargaining a taxi down from 40 LE to 20 LE. I was greeted by my host who lived in a very plush apartment with high ceilings, large spacious rooms, clean bathrooms, and air conditioning. Even though I had only been in Cairo for a week and a half it was nice to come to a more quiet and relaxed area where everything was just a tiny bit cleaner, a tiny bit less crowded, and a tiny bit less humid.

Alexandria is the second largest city in Egypt and the difference from Cairo is quite evident as soon as I started walking around the city. As my guide book describes it, “it turns its back on the rest of Egypt and faces the Mediterranean, as if contemplating its glorious past.” And this is true. The drivers are still crazy here but upon arriving I felt a complete change in atmosphere and surroundings. It is like going from the city of New York to the shores of Santa Cruz. I was hassled less here and the people here were slightly dressed in a more Western way with a little more skin showing (elbows and hands), sometimes shorts, not as many headscarves or traditional wear, and a more relaxing attitude in general.

The city, founded by Alexander the Great, was an important city in the past. His chief architect for the project was Dinocrates. But a few months after it was found, Alexander left the city and never returned. Very little of the ancient city has survived with the submerged Royal Quarters beneath the harbor. As a diver I was really interested to see the ruins of the royal quarters of Cleopatra, but didn’t get a chance to explore the lost underwater city.

My main reason for coming to this city was to see the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. This building was built to remember the Library of Alexandria. What an interesting resurrection of an ancient wonder. Upon approaching from the sea side, there is a huge planetarium that looks like it is embedded into the concrete. Coming up the steps there is a giant discus embedded in the ground at an angle – representing a man made glass, steel and stone rising sun beside the Mediterranean. On the exterior the stone is carved with pictograms, hieroglyphs and letters from every alphabet.

The disk seems to sit in a pool of water which at eye level seems to continue and connect with the ocean. The metal panels on the roof are composed of 9x14 meter modules- with most of them split into two – half being a skylight to allow light into the reading area.

Unfortunately I did not have time to go see the interior but from what I read the library has four levels below and seven above ground. There is a large main reading area with eight terraces, along with other programs that are required for running a library.

Having a circular form creates a strong iconic presence and it seems to symbolically represent a continuous quest or absorption of knowledge. The circular wall is considered the largest in the world with a diameter of 160 meters and a height of 35 meters. I’d be interested to see how they solved the problems of submersing half the building below the ground on a site that is very close to the sea.

The rest of the time spent in Alexandria was relaxing – from meeting some British engineers and eating delicious homemade chili and discussing construction methods in North Africa to playing Frisbee on the American School campus grounds in the middle of the night and discussing life.

Now here I am in Dahab, looking at the ocean, but also an array of unfinished buildings and the occasional mosque set between the calm blue waters and the dry brown layered mountain backdrop. From what I’ve seen in Egypt thus far, the norm of the built environment in developed areas seems to be an endless amount of grayish concrete skeletons with pieces of rebar protruding from them and dusty abandoned buildings covered with broken windows and trash scattered about the site.