We took a day trip up to Alexandria, just to check it out, and found that a day was just right. We had hoped to see the Jewelry Museum showing the excesses of the last king, but it seems that it's been closed "for two months" for the last four years or so. We did check out the catacombs dating back to the Roman times with neat Graeco-Egyptian hybrid statues (our first catacombs) and the new library of Alexandria (I think there was a fire or something, that's why we couldn't see the last one). It has an enormous wall, covered with samples of writing from every known writing system ever. It's pretty astounding just to stare at and try and figure out where a system even comes from. A tea by the Mediterranean and some neat Egyptian desserts finished the day before we boarded the train back to Cairo.