Catacombs

After breakfast we headed to the Catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqafa, the largest known Roman burial site in Egypt. They are large, tri-leveled tombs dug underground. There is a large room which is the main burial chamber, thought to be that of some Roman nobles, but no one knows for sure who really was buried in the catacombs. Around the main chamber are larger ones with many holes lining the walls in which many other bodies were placed. It was interesting to walk around inside, and I felt very much like being in a work by Edgar Allan Poe.

Next we walked down the street to see Pompey's Pillar, a huge 30 metre high column of pink granite, used as a temple for worship back in 293 AD. We didn't actually pay to go in, since all of the places around the pillar are in heaps of rubble, and we could see the pillar itself through the gates, bargain.

Ready to move on, we spent the afternoon stuffing around with taxi drivers, trying to organise tickets to Siwa, our next destination. We headed to the bus station to buy tickets, then couldn't get a taxi back to the museum we wanted to go to for a reasonable price, so we took the local tram, a run-down but useful little trolley/cable car that runs around town. Well, our Arabic not being up up to standard, we didn't know where to get off so just took a guess. At the tram station, the maps are all in Arabic as well, so there was nothing we could do except walk down to the water and orientate ourselves from there. It turns out that we needed to stay on the tram for at least 10 more stops! But, being a nice day, we just walked along the water. By the time we were near the museum, we didn't think it was worth going into for just an hour (which is all the time we could spare), so we just continued on walking back to our hotel. We passed by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a beautiful structure (it is a real library), inspired by the original great library here in the 3rd century BC. The architecture is great it has a huge windowed wedge which is the main part of the library and a huge sphere that is half above ground and half below. Impressive stuff.

Done wandering, we had just enough time to have a quick lunch at Mohammed Ahmeds, grab our bags at the hotel, and get to the bus station. The trip west to Siwa was a long 10 hours. We drove along the coast for the first 5 hours, passing some absolutely gorgeous beaches and hideous unfinished resorts, before turning south and into the desert. Unfortunately the numerous 'tea & sheesha' stops made the trip seem even longer.