Rosetta

Yesterday we got invited along on a day trip to Rosetta, Egypt by our Head of School, Nada and new baby Malcolm and some of her friends from Cairo. First though, we stopped by the soccer fields and watched one of the boys and one of the girl’s games. We are hosting the ISAC soccer tournament this weekend. The other four schools are from Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Go Falcons!

Rosetta is where they found the Rosetta Stone in 1799 and how they were able to relearn the ancient lost language of reading hieroglyphics. It’s only about an hours drive east from Alexandria along the Mediterranean Sea coast; it was a lovely drive with all the tropical palm trees and orange groves which are now in season.

We were a little disappointed though that we didn’t get to see any museums or anything about the Rosetta Stone. So many things are closed and under reconstruction since they are tying to create a place that will attract more tourists. We stopped at a little restaurant on the water front to order some food for lunch. The owner was very happy to serve us and informed us the food will be ready in one and a half hours. When we were shocked by this, he said, “Fresh Fish!” He was literally going to go out and catch the fish and then cook for us. After much debate we decided this was ok but we were going to go see the town while he fished, we gave him half the money for the meal since we was worried we wouldn’t come back.

So we took a nice long walking tour of the village and saw around nine Ottoman houses from the 17th century and also the Azouz bammam (public bath house) from the 18th century which is almost entirely intact since it’s made out of marble. I really like the ceiling which had little holes covered in stained glass to let in the light. In one area the holes were all sorts of different shapes and colors and it reminded me of the little marshmallows in Lucky Charms.






Since we were so hungry and were still waiting for our fish to be caught we bought some very good cookies from a baker in the street. The whole two hours that we walked around a little local girl followed us around the entire town. It didn’t help that we gave her cookies. The little girl was not our only companion on the walk, like always when we are out touring, it’s inevitable that the military police always get alerted to our presents and one (or several) always joins us for “our protection”. Not that there is anything to need to be protected from, it is very safe here and very few instances of trouble of tourist. It is just that, they are always very concerned for Americans safety because they don’t ever want to have to deal with our government if there was a safety issue and they really want to increase their tourism industry. I think part of it also is that Egypt has a mandatory service in the military law and I think there are just too many military men and they just plain need something to do sometimes. The funny part about it was that Nada’s friends from Cairo are Canadians that teach at the Canadian school there and they were shocked because they never get military escorts. Nobody ever cares about the Canadians. When we went back to our little restaurant to enjoy our “fresh fish” our military escort turned into a full truck load of men. And by the time we left town we had a whole caravan of military trucks ahead and behind us. So I can now say I have been escorted out of town by the police.