Our goal this morning was to have breakfast at the hotel at 8, pool at 9, and check out at 11. We got up a little early to walk Nat back to her parents and then fell back asleep until closer to 9-10. Marian, Diaa, and family went home early to prepare for a wedding.
We made our way over to check out at 11:15 where naturally I snitched about them closing the pool early. Mina was waiting right outside the door for us and talking to some guy in a suit with a holstered gun. We noticed that the 4 of us were all dressed the same: black shirts and green pants… except Sarah had on blue jeans. As we start to get in the car, Mina apologizes to Sarah and says she has to sit in the back with us because the armed man is part of the tourist police and will be joining us until who knows when. We all squeeze in to the car. I try to explain to Matt who he is but also I still don’t understand what’s going on. I started thinking maybe I was too loud on the beach or showed too much shoulder and got reported. I could feel Matt’s heart racing and my own tears were locked and loaded. As I eavesdrop on their conversation, I catch them saying something about improper reporting, 3 Americans, and they are family. I start texting my dad everything that’s going on while talking to Mina as normal about where we wanted to go. I learned that our program for the day was unaffected but he would be staying with us all day, including our 3 hour drive to Cairo.
As if I haven’t already been on edge this trip, now here is this medium-high ranking tourist police attached to us.
We reached our brunch spot, SkyBoo, which was right on the Mediterranean Sea with an amazing view. At this point, my heart had sank to my stomach and I was certain we’d end up on an episode of locked up abroad. Matt and Sarah noticed that I was a ticking time bomb but Sarah was a little bit over me. I chugged a bunch of water to keep from crying and Sarah casually just told me to relax and not overreact. So I started texting Mina to try to get more information. Mina explains that we didn’t do anything wrong, and this is just for safety, but that I would need to talk to this man personally and ask him not to come with us to Cairo. I continue updating my dad through text and then my mom called me for more details. After the conversation with my mom I learn that elections are coming up and the tourism industry badly needs everything to go smoothly and protect tourists at all costs. They can’t afford a news story about Americans getting hurt so the tourism police are out and about serving as bodyguards, essentially.

I finally calmed back down and gained my appetite. Which was good because this particular brunch menu had much less lies on it. We ordered omelettes and Nutella crepes. The restaurant was a little warm but the views were really great.

After brunch we all piled back in the car with our bodyguard and headed over to the Citadel. It was only a few yards away so I waited before making my speech. The Citadel of Qaitbay is a 15th-century defensive fortress located on the Mediterranean sea coast, in Alexandria, Egypt. It was built from 1477 to 1479 AD by Sultan Al-Ashraf Sayf al-Din Qa’it Bay. The Qaitbay Citadel in Alexandria is considered one of the most important defensive strongholds, not only in Egypt, but also along the Mediterranean Sea coast. It looked very neat and super solid.

Our new friend let us cut the ticket line and walked us around the entire complex. At some point when Matthew and Sarah had stepped away to use the restrooms, I had a conversation with our officer buddy and told him that we were squished, tired, and not in need of his help. I also told him that I had a bad knee and wouldn’t be able to stay smushed in the car for 3 hours. He turned out to be very nice and said that he would need the approval from his boss. He also noted that if it was up to him he would love to avoid a 6 hour round trip to Cairo and back. We walked around and got some pretty good photos; he ended up being our own personal photographer.

The next stop after the Citadel was the Library of Alexandria. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a major library and cultural center on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in Alexandria. It is a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria, once one of the largest libraries worldwide, which was lost in antiquity. Unfortunately, it was temporarily closed but we still got to take photos of the outside. Since this was our last stop in Alexandria, I told Officer Smith & Wesson to call his boss before we got back in the car so that I could speak to him myself. On the way to the library, Mina had mentioned to him that Matt was going to call the embassy if he continued on with us to Cairo. Anyways, he got ahold of his boss and without my involvement was able to break free from us.

Thus started our journey back to Cairo. We asked Mina for a recommendation for dinner and he told us about a restaurant called Hagooga. We made a stop and got three plates of lamb for take away. The restaurant was packed full and there was barely any space to walk around. It appears to be very popular. The guy at the register helped me order since I couldn’t read the Arabic menu. He was very friendly and laughed a little at my arabic. My words were the equivalent of going to a pork restaurant and asking for 3 plates of pig. Anyhow. We took our food home, ate, relaxed, and waited for the rest of the gang to come home from their festivities.