poundster.com

Day 79: For all of our planning, some of the best days on this trip have been marked by experiences in which our loosely-formed expectations have been unexpectedly exceeded.

The minute that we walked through the doorway into the reading room of Alexandria’s Bibliotheca Alexandria, we knew that we’d stumbled onto another such spot.

There was no better place that could simultaneously cater to Kate’s love of books and my love of public architecture (and, ahem, free wireless internet access).

There was a grand tiered reading room spanning 7 floors that was said to be the largest in the world, a permanent exhibition of antiquarian manuscripts and free daily guided tours of the building in English and other languages.

The entrance to the library complex was beneath an impressive curved facade inscribed with Egyptian heiroglyphs, and the nearby planetarium was beautifully lit in blue at night.

It was a great place to spend our last day in Egypt and the best made modern building that we came across in our travels in Egypt.