Egypt Day 5 - July 9th

Woke up at 8 am this morning and had breakfast and left the hotel by 9am. Breakfast was the same but had coffee and it tasted great. At 9am, we got on the bus to head to where the Nile river turns into the Mediterranean Sea. We stopped at the castle where they cut the Rosetta Stone out of the wall. This castle was the main port for all of Africa in the 21st century. This is why the stone was here as they needed translation between Egyptian and Greek when trading. The castle was small and renovated so it looked pretty new. The Egyptians have cool places but other countries have stolen what was theirs. Brittany and I walked into the old French bath with the phone light on, and seconds later a bat came flying at my head. It touched my forehead and we freaked out. At the castle, we also got to pick up and hold rocks and metal that they carved out to be cannon balls. The entire time while we were here, we had as least four police around us, not counting our personal policeman that travels with us. They closed the castle down until we exited, as we are VIP here in Egypt. After leaving the castle, we headed to a local family who makes their living making furniture out of bamboo. We watched them make a table and also got to sit in their chairs as well as try and make some furniture ourselves. The family was so exited to have us as guests in their homes, it was amazing how generous they were. After the furniture store, we left for lunch. Lunch got a little messed up as we were supposed to go to the other side of the river to eat lunch with a local family on their farm, but they police said no as they didn’t see that on our schedule so we could not do it. They cleared out a restaurant for us to eat at and our tour guide brought the food the family had made. We had police at every gate while eating here. Once done, they walked us out and made all the cars stop so we could cross the street. On the way out of town after lunch, we we had a police car turn on the sirens and lead us out of town. Then two more caught up with us after they left and lead us all the way back to the hotel. The police text and call tour guides to check in on us foreigners/Americans. We were treated very nice here and the locals also enjoyed taking pictures of us. After, we headed to Tim and Ingrid’s home in Alexandria! It was a very very nice home with beautiful finishings and furniture. After a little bit a phone time, as they actually had WiFi, we headed off to play our soccer game against local Egyptian girls. This game was harder as this team was not afraid to push as around. We were losing at the start but we pulled through to get the 4-3 win. After the game, we talked with the girls about soccer in Egypt and how they got started. All of the girls are the first women in their family to play a sport, as girls are still discouraged from playing sports. We took lots of photos as they wanted them with the white American girls but this time we were happy to take pictures with them! We then walked to the tram station to catch a 45 minute ride back to the hotel. Once arriving at the hotel, we got finally got some showers to rinse off all the sweat from the game. After showers, we had dinner waiting for us. Another girl and I got the same thing we had last night, and it was just as good night two. I ate basically a chocolate crepe to finish off the day.