Although we felt we had left in plenty of time, we got stuck in Tunis rush hour, and lost about half an hour or so there. Once we had the car dropped off, we were cutting it awfully close and hustled to passport control. We had boarding passes downloaded to our phones, but the immigration official sent us back to get paper copies. Now we were really stressed!
We had some trouble finding the Tunisair counter we needed to be at, and then had to queue there. Once I was actually able to talk to the attendant, her first words were "you're too late"! In the end, she seemed to persuade herself that we were not too late, possibly because we reassured her that we did not have baggage to check, and she eventually handed us paper boarding passes. In the end, we got to the gate by last call, only to then sit on the tarmac for more than an hour due to a mechanical issue with the plane. Go figure . . .
Once in the Algiers airport, I was mildly nervous, because my visa had been issued by the embassy in Ottawa with my name misspelled, but that did not prove to be an issue. Still, even after the immigration officer said a fairly friendly "you are very welcome in Algeria," we had a long wait without our passports while a posse of immigration officers did who-knows-what.
In any case, after another odd experience negotiating for a taxi from the airport, we reached our hotel just after noon.
We opted for a room on the top floor, the fourth, and this was our view from our balcony, northward over several blocks of Algiers and out toward the sea.
After resting and a lunch of chicken shawarma, we headed out to do some afternoon sightseeing. There is a metro stop just a few blocks from our hotel, so we headed there. Algiers is only one of two African cities (along with Cairo) with a metro transit system. It costs 50 Algerian dinar to ride, about 50 cents.
We rode a few stops to the Jardin d'Essais station, where the metro line meets up with a cable car system that takes you from more-or-less sea level up the cliffs above the Bay of Algiers.
It only takes a couple of minutes to get to the top, and there is a nice view from there. Interestingly, the tall tower you can see in the distance in the right of the picture below is the minaret (apparently tallest in the world) of the brand new Djamaa El Djazair mosque. We learned later that construction of this mosque (which cost well over a billion euros and was built by a Chinese contractor) is controversial in Algeria, and is seen by many as a legacy project for longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
In any case, from our view over Algiers, we headed further south towards the martyrs memorial, a massive monument to the memory of those who died fighting France in the 1950s and 1960s.
There is a large square behind the monument and we walked across it to get a coffee and enjoy the perspective from a distance.
We came back down the cable car and our next stop was the Jardin d'essai du Hamma, the botanical garden/park that sits just below the martyrs monument.
Across the street from the gate of the botanical gardens is Algiers' Musee des Beaux Arts. We were not sure how interested we were in the museum, but I had read that the building's balcony was worth visiting in and of itself, and admission was very reasonable at about $2.
We found some interesting art, and the building itself was interesting.
But, indeed, the balcony was the highlight, with a great view out over the botanical gardens.
After the fine arts museum, I was hoping to mail a postcard, so from the Jardin d'essais station we took the metro to Algiers famous post office.
Unfortunately the post office was closed, but we decided to walk back to the hotel from there rather than ride the metro again, and we enjoyed walking along the avenues lined with French colonial era buildings and interesting shops.
Back at the hotel we rested up before heading out for dinner. We walked to the Restaurant Le Bearnais, where we enjoyed a bottle of Algerian wine.
We were amazed to learn that Algeria was once the world's largest exporter of wine! (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/wine/the-rise-and-fall-of-a-wine-juggernaut-or-why-your-wine-doesnt-come-from-algeria-any-more/article9076845/)
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