Seeing the sites and sights

The weekend passed in a blur.  Friday I needed my own space so went to the beach early and then pottered in and out of the apartment completing my first assignment - a journal of our foreign language learning experience - and catching up with chores like picking up my laundry, buying some vegetables and moving the furniture around in the flat.  I'm starting to learn a few things like where the laundry is (I rapidly discovered there was no laundromat and no working washing machine in the apartment building).  I'm not sure why washing clothes is not catered for publicly here, but suspect it is because women are expected to stay home and wash by hand.  

I went to a vegetable shop that I have been to a couple of times before and this time I was greeted and invited into the inner shop where there were better vegetables.  It seems that all the vegetables and fruit you want to buy can be put in one bag and they weigh everything together and give you the price with a quick glance inside the bag.  Every time I work something out, I feel a little more confident about being in public.  I think my challenge for next week is going to be to flag down a minibus on the Corniche and travel down to the famous new Alexandria library.  Today in the lunch break, I walked down as far as the bend in the bay where you can see a fort on the distant headland and I know from our sight seeing tour yesterday that the library is on the nearer side of the curve of the headland.

Our tour yesterday gave me a much better sense of where things are in Alexandria.  We went to the standard tourist sites here like the catacombs, Pompey's column, the sultan's fort and a palace area.  One of the drivers from the school took us around and allowed us half an hour at each place.  It was very hard for us to work out the processes for getting in and how to interpret the site because our driver spoke very little English but we all helped each other and worked things out.  There seemed to be a lot of policemen at the different sites and sometimes we were expected to give them tips.   We also had to pay to go into the sites but as with all other things it was fairly cheap.

I'm writing this in a break between classes and have run out of time so will add one of the photos from our tour later.