The monasteries of St. Anthony and St Paul

 

What do you do when you get an extra day off school for Labour Day (in the UK we call this May Day) ?   Well . . . .  .  we get up an hour earlier than on a school day (5am instead of 6am) and spend 6 hours in a mini bus (3 hours there and 3 hours back) .  Of course once you’re the mini bus you do go back to sleep – once you’ve seen one pile of sand it starts to loose it’s appeal. We headed south from Cairo towards Ain Souknah and the coast road to Hurgharda, once we reached Souknah we drove south with the sea on our left until we reached the turning for St. Antony’s Monastery. This monastery claims to be the oldest  in the world built in the 5th century, http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/antony.htm will give you some of the details. The place was well laid out, the monks gave informative tours and there was a very good gift shop at the end. We spent 2 hours there looking at the fortress the monks would hide in from the Bedouins, the 6th century refectory with it’s lipped table for breaking the hard bread on and catching the crumbs the olive press and coffee grinders. we saw the Saint associated with the church and, like St Helena, they have a splinter from the original cross. There was a glass floor to examine the bread ovens from an older monastery and, of-course, the original icons painted on the walls, Big eyes because of their holiness, small mouths because they don’t talk a lot and ears to listen with.

		St Antony’s Monastery VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

The monastery has it’s own water supply from a source in the mountain but they aren’t too sure how it gets there as they are 400 ft above sea level and it won’t be rain! Anyway it is sufficient to supply the needs of the 120 monks who live here. To enter the monastery people were originally hauled up with a harness and food was delivered by basket in a similar manner. Nowadays there is a gate and the monks work at candle making . . . . 

From here we dove another 85km (20km as the crow flies) to St. Pauls. This is a smaller monastery built for the first Egyptian hermit St. Paul and houses only 90 monks. Once again we received a guided tour from the monks, saw icons and relics, drank from the spring (still of unknown source) and found my tessellation as the pavement outside the gift shop!

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/egypt/st-pauls-monastery

		St. Paul’s VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

For some reason there is a lot of building going on here. We stopped at the canteen for a drink and then back in the bus to head for Cairo.

15th April A trip to Alex

 

After another splendid buffet breakfast at the hotel we set off to see some more of Alexandria. Today was Easter day in the Coptic calendar so we took a non directly route to avoid the traffic. This took us past the fish farm and the salt deposits. Just like the ones in Namibia, they look like a red sea because of the algae that turn the flamingos pink.

It took an hour to get to Pompeii's column but it was worth it when we got there. There was an underground chamber and sanctuary to see as well as the pillar itself.

		Pompeii’s Pillar VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

From here we drove down some bumpy roads to the catacombs. Another one of the places where you can’t use a camera, the girls we paid did that Egyptian trick of switching the money for other notes when Geoff turned to ask me about leaving the camera with them. Very annoying!

 

The catacombs were worth the visit as well. Lots of holes in the walls some with Roman markings others with hieroglyphs and some with both as the cultures combined and a hall for relatives to eat in when they visited their dear departed.

From here we drove to the Roman amphitheatre  and the Villa of the birds. to get there we  past what can only be described as a chop shops (the picture was taken at the last moment, some of the cars were plied 3 high!) and fish shops.

We were stitched up here over money as well as we paid too much and they gave us no change. (Geoff was annoyed by now with this). The amphitheatre was quite good and the villa was a floor with a bird mosaic on it.

		Amphitheatre VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

From here we set off to see the library in Alexandria (sorry I couldn’t resist) and on our way we passed my pavement. I yelled at the driver to stop, leapt out and took some pictures for David Bailey, much to the amusement of 3 Egyptian men stood next to it).

Anyway we finally made it to the library in time to take a few pictures before we headed back to the hotel for a snooze before dinner.

14th April An afternoon on the beach

 

We got back from El Alamein at around 2pm and at a cost of 350 LE (£35) for the driver. After a drink we headed for the beach. Me to read and Maddy and Geoff to swim, snorkel and build a sandcastle/pyramid. The water was rather cold – not like the Red Sea.

 

Part way through the afternoon we had a ladybird infestation.

And then they built a sand pyramid . At times it did seem as though Geoff was more interested in the project than Maddison, but they finished it at last and then the sea tried to fill the moat.

In the evening we had dinner in the hotel. Excellent – in fact so good we had dinner there the following evening as well.