Lone Woman on Metro

Seeing as we've booked accommodation in Alexandria and are planning on going there for the long weekend, we figured we'd better get ourselves some transport!!
There is always the option of getting a driver, but our trusty "yellow book" (written by teachers at school) and the Lonely Planet/Rough Guide all said that the train journey is straight-forward, so we thought we'd give that a go. Not wanting to turn up at the station to catch a train that was fully booked, I decided to head to Ramses Station (the biggie in Cairo) tonight to get our tickets. Scotty had rehearsal, so I would be taking the Metro and negotiating town by myself.

I was pleased with myself at the Maadi Metro Station, as I managed to be quite Egyptian and push in front of someone when I bought my ticket :) I followed this good start with finding a place on the platform by the "Women" sign which shows where the women-only carriages will arrive.

As Scotty and I have always travelled together this was my first experience of the women-only carriages, and what a blast! It was basically like some huge "mother's meeting"! There was just loads of friendly chatting going up and down the carriage. It was mainly young women on the carriage I would say; late-teens and twenty-somethings. As I've come to expect only one or two women were not wearing scarves. But this made the carriage so vibrant and full of colour. Yellow and green are still popular colours, but light-pink seems to be popular too. A lot of women here w denim too I noticed; either jeans, or as a long denim skirt and some had denim jackets on too. A lot of the girls were carrying books, which made me think they were on their way to night-school to learn English or Arabic.

When I got to Mubark Station I was deliberately slow leaving the train and going through the barriers. This was because I wanted to get my bearings and didn't want to exit the station on the wrong side of the main road! I eventually saw a sign that said "Egyptian Railways" and saw some other Westerners heading in that direction, so thought I must be right.

Ramses Station is the size you would expect really for a terminal station; think Kings Cross or St Pancras. I arrived at the end of prayers and so about 50 men were moving off prayer mats that had been laid in the Eastern corner of the station to find their shoes. At this stage I did consult the little map of the station in the Lonely Planet Guide. This was useful as it points exactly which of the many ticket offices you go to to buy First Class Tickets to Alexandria. It was easy to find and as someone had just finished buying their tickets I didn't need to wait at all.

Looking back, I do feel a bit bad that I didn't attempt any Arabic at all with the Ticket Office Attendant, but I guess I was just worried about making myself clear - and thought I had a better chance with English than Arabic. Anyway he understood what I was on about and we are now in the possession of two First-Class Tickets, 6pm train, to Alexandria on Thursday! Costing less than 100LE for the pair! Brilliant!!