Eleven days at sea will make a person crazy. Sockwrestling, Halloween parties (I was a tree, Emily was my squirrel, Zach was my bird, Mike & Lindsay were frat/sorority dude/chick, Benjamin was Waldo, Zoya was a gypsy, Becky was Josh, Margo was Tiger Lily, Alan was Dr. Cecil...), Sea Olympics, dancing on the deck...

We rode the gentle Suez our last day before docking in Alexandria, Egypt. To our right, the Sinai Peninsula, to our left, the Egyptian desert. Like a caravan of Thai elephants (poor elephants in Thailand...), the ships sat single-file on the northward pulling current spilling into the Mediterranean Sea, which is now rocking and throwing our ship like the Pacific did before Hawaii. Before that, India. After that, Egypt. Now, we're almost in Turkey.

Itinerary, Day one: Alexandria

-Visit the Catacombs of Shawqafa (2nd century BCE). So cool! (This innocent expression naturally popped out of our mouths so many times...) Climb down into them, look around, electricity goes off momentarily. Gasp! Complete darkness. Complete. Step in stagnant water by accident, walk on boards, look at 2,000-year-old horse bones and people bones.
-Visit National Museum with underwater photography of Cleopatra's sunken tomb and mummies.
-Montaza Gardens and King Farouk's castle where Mubarak occasionally stays. Mubarak is disliked by the locals.
-Visit Bibliotheca Alexandrina which is 14 stories big, with four of those stories underground. It's new and great fun.
-Eat across from the Qait Bey Fort (built on the original site of the Pharos, Alexandria's ancient lighthouse which was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World).
-Visit Abu El Abbas mosque and play with kid in front.
-Fish market dinner with tons of people. One person orders a fish and the whole table is covered in hummus, baba ganoush, pickles, veggies, pita, sundried tomato/chickpea mash ... for free. Wine next to an open window overlooking the boatyard of Alexandria's portion of the Mediterranean, cats asking for scraps, breeze blowing in. It's chilly there. (Cold now.)
-Dessert adventure with Zoya in downstairs bakery.

Itinerary, Day two: Cairo

-Drive to Al Qahira
-Stop at Egypt's oldest ancient cemetery, Sakkara
-Visit the Step Pyramid of King Zoser (5,000 years old) and see the mastabas (tombs) nearby (inside photo of me with hieroglyphics in background. This is an illegal photo. Shh. It's Zach's fault.)
-Fab lunch. Wow.
-Go to the National Archaeological Museum. (See REAL mummies. No coverings, actual skin, faces, hair, fingers, fingernails ... bodies preserved for thousands and thousands of years. They had become thoroughly black.) The Tut Ankh Amun collection here is the largest in the world. We saw only a fraction of what there was to see.
-Ridiculously nice hotel for dinner and sleeping. Ramsey's Hilton. Man, fancy. Roomie Brydon and I hit the sack (which was a heavenly cloud of comfort) at nine to get up at four for sunrise at the pyramids atop camels.

Itinerary, Day three: Cairo

-Wake up at 4 a.m., grab free coffee and croissants from hotel.
-Arrive at Giza Plateau for the Great Pyramids at sunrise. Rode a camel with Brydon. That, friend, is terrifying but fantastic for the hips.
-A few hours of exploration and awe. The Pyramids are HUGE.
-Crawl into the medium-sized Pyramid. (Literally crawled. It was so, so hot.)
-Visit the Sphinx. Was super impressed with young girl who approached me speaking Italian, then switched to French with someone else, then heard me speak English with a friend and changed from 'Faciamo un foto insieme' to 'Let's take a photo together!' These people are linguistically brilliant.
-Leave the complex for a fab lunch on a boat going down the Nile River -- saw belly dancing and music performances. Also ate way too much delicious bread pudding.
-Travel to Khan El Khalili Bazaar in Cairo Central. (Bought Mary Thacker's Christmas present.)
-Get some fresh falafel for the busride back to Alexandria, sleep on bus.

Itinerary, Day four: Solo day

-Attempt to ask for a ride from seemingly nice taxi driver. Get reprimanded instead. Almost cry but join group of girls going to breakfast instead. Get rockin' falafel and beans and pita for breakfast.
-Go to the grocery store, get dropped and left by another seemingly nice taxi driver. Find an actual nice one to take me home. Play the 'name that car' game with him in Arabic on the way home.
-Go to Internet café with Emily, get smacked and grabbed on the butt, boobs and other on the way there and the way back by teenage boys running the city block between the café and our ship.
-Get about nine men from the ship, go to dinner. On the way to dinner, walk by alleyway filled with lights and music. Stop for wedding celebration. Danced and sang with entire Egyptian neighborhood from dirty pavement to third-floor windows.
-Rockin' dinner of falafel mash salad pita "sandwishes" and calamari, shisha (flavored tobacco) and also baklawa and honey coconut something delicious covered in hazelnuts as well as Turkish coffee. Humuna yum.

Itinerary, Day five: last day

-Orphanage visit, where no children were. They were at school.
-Walk around with Sheryl, Jesse and Jessie, got some great tomato soup on the sea, and some more calamari (sorry squids) and a bit of wine for dinner.

Okay then. First of all, riding the Suez was fascinating. We ate breakfast and watched the Sinai Peninsula pass by. Men holding machine guns and sitting in security booths raised their arms and waved to our ship. The weather was perfect. I read the entire day a book of Nabokov's and all the students onboard prepared for what was maybe the country in which we were to have the most historically thrilling experiences.

We were thrown back into elementary school where we first learned about pyramids, mummies, hieroglyphics, pharaohs, Cleopatra and King Tut.

How beautiful Alexandria is! Oh the weather! Before this I had never been to the desert (nothing but the best for the first experience!) and had heard about the dry heat. Blah, blah, it's so nice, it's so cool, it's so comfortable ... But believe me, everything you've heard is true. The days are hot, but the shade is cool. The nights and early mornings are cool enough for a sweater and a chill. We shivered at sunrise.

The architecture is mostly Greek and Roman with Egyptian character. The streets felt anything but African. What an interesting culture. The people do not consider themselves Arab, nor African, nor Mediterranean really ... just Egyptian, which means Arab, African and Mediterranean all rolled into one with the added bonus of having a completely engulfing ancient history.

On a personal level, the people we met were mostly welcoming and curious about us. I was touched all the time in very different ways. Young teenage girls ran their fingers through my hair as we passed each other. Little boys shook my hand. Grown men kissed both my cheeks. Young men slapped my butt (among other things). Grown women held my hands and kissed me. They are "family," said my guide. "You are home here," she told us. "Welcome home."

The intimidating nature of such a contact-motivated society pushed a few girls too far. For me, it was difficult only if I felt the touch or proximity between me and another was inappropriate. But that was rare. For the most part, I really did feel welcomed -- even by the guy I bought a gift from in Cairo. He gave me coffee and we chatted a bit before I even paid. And after I paid, he kissed both my cheeks and my money, since I was his first customer (he said). A few young women approached me at the sphinx and introduced me to their entire families. I held the baby.

Something unnerving: Why do the women cover themselves? I'm still not sure. And we're about to enter Turkey. I stood in an elevator in the library of Alexandria with a woman completely covered in black, with not even a finger showing. She wore black gloves. Only the slits of her eyes were visible. I felt naked in jeans, long sleeves and a pashmina. Zoya thought maybe this gives her a sense of empowerment; she can see me, but I can't see her.

Earlier in my women's studies class a few students thought it was oppression, a few thought it was purely cultural and critically unimportant. I'm just confused. We danced with barefoot women in an alley, spoke with half-covered female college students, and saw fully veiled enigmas walking the streets. The issue is so complicated -- it's not religiously driven, according to these professors, but is a cultural practice and "style" now. Really? I'm not sure.

And it's amazing: young men hire prostitutes during their teenage years, but want a virgin when it's time for them to marry. So women get re-sewn in order to appear "pure" and thus be acceptable. AND women give birth to baby girls without issuing bona fide birth certificates; when the girls first menstruate, they're then seen by a doctor and evaluated as being 16, an eligible adult, even though they may be 12, 13, 14...

Not to turn this into a feminist rant. I'm very tired. Clearly. The pyramids were HUGE. Huge huge. Like really really big and huge and beautiful and wonderful. But the camels were scary, and unattractive when they yawn. I don't think I've done anything on this trip so far that has truly brought me back to childhood. Egypt did. It was so much fun, so literally awesome, so old and crumbling and mesmerizing. "Cleopatra climbed this staircase..." She sure did. (She was the 13th Cleopatra, by the way. The 13th? Or, the 14th?) Get out your history books.