Alexandria - Day 2 - Library and Royal Jewelry Museum

One of the impressive things about the city of Alexandria is its long, about 40km, of coastline along the Mediterranean coast.  We drove along this road everyday and it seems like life here revolves around this part of the city.  There are restaurants, fishing, construction, shops, hotels, etc, along this road.  Our hotel is not far from the coast so every morning we see the city come alive.

The next few days we'll be visiting some of the important landmarks.  One famous landmark you may have heard of, but won't see is the Lighthouse of Alexandria.  It was built around 250 BC by Ptolemy II Philadelphus.  It was estimated to be over 300 feet tall, one of the tallest man-made structures in the world.  It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  It was badly damaged in three earthquakes between 956 and 1303 AD and became an abandoned ruin.

Our first stop this morning is the Citadel of Qaitbay.  It was one of most important defensive strongholds in Egypt.  It was built on the former site of the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

Our next stop is the famous and modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina  It sits about 400 yds from where the original Bibliotheca Alexandrina was located.  It is a major library and cultural center in the city.  We were given a tour of the library and later visit some of the museums within the library.  There are 3 museums in the library:  Antiquities, Manuscript and Sadat.  The most touching is the Sadat Museum, which contains many personal belongings of the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated at the peak of his career.

Biblioteca Alexandrina from Wikipedia by Shivani Singh04

Following a very generous lunch at one of the local restaurants we went to visit the Royal Jewelry Museum.  The museum holds a collection of priceless jewelry belonging to the royal family of the Muhammed Ali dynasty.

A generous local lunch

When we get back to the hotel we had time to wander around the hotel and park.  In a couple of the evenings we were at the hotel, there were big wedding parties.  The locals are not allowed into the hotel grounds but the park was big enough that this became a popular place for families to hang out.