Alexandria's Coast: One Confirmed Price and a Lot of Negotiating
Marcus tallies the entrance fees for the Citadel of Qaitbay and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, then gives up trying to pin a number on the taxis along the Corniche.
Three stops in one day: the Citadel of Qaitbay, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and the Corniche on the way back to wherever the taxi decides to stop. Entrance to the Citadel runs $5 USD for adults and $2.53 USD for children aged six to eleven, paid in cash at the gate. That is the only price in this piece confirmed to the cent. Everything else in Alexandria negotiates.
Morning: The Citadel of Qaitbay
The Citadel of Qaitbay ($5 USD, about 245 EGP at a working rate of 49 to the dollar) sits on the exact footprint of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, gone since an earthquake finished it off long before Sultan Qaitbay's builders arrived in the 15th century and reused whatever stone survived. It still guards the mouth of the Eastern Harbour. Still does the job, in the sense that nobody has invaded Alexandria by rowboat recently.
The children's ticket, $2.53 USD (about 124 EGP), is the only price in Egypt so far encountered with cents attached. Everything else in the country rounds to the nearest pound, or the nearest argument. Inside the walls: a stone courtyard, a mosque built into the fortress structure, cannon emplacements facing the water, and enough tour groups by mid morning that the courtyard photo requires either patience or a wide angle lens.
Reality check
Government run sites like Qaitbay post one price and stick to it. Nobody haggles with a ticket booth.
Midday: The Bibliotheca Alexandrina
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina was built to honour the ancient Library of Alexandria, the one that burned and became a byword for lost knowledge long before anyone here was around to mourn it properly. The modern building does not pretend to be a reconstruction. It reads as a research facility with better lighting.
Inside: a single reading hall on tiered floors, dropping level by level toward a wall of windows, rows of workstations, and stacks running the full depth of the room. People actually work in it, laptops open, headphones on, the way a library is supposed to function and rarely does once it becomes a tourist stop.
No entrance price is confirmed here, so none gets printed. Ask three staff members what a ticket costs and expect three different pound figures, none of them wrong exactly, all of them current as of whenever they last checked.
The only price confirmed to the cent belongs to a fort guarding a lighthouse that isn't there anymore.
Afternoon: The Corniche and the Real Cost of Getting Around
The Corniche runs the length of Alexandria's waterfront, a coastal road with the sea on one side and the city on the other, thick with the black and yellow taxis that define how anyone actually gets around here. None of them run on the meter. All of them have a number in mind before you finish saying where you are going.
Reality check
Agree the fare before the door closes, not after. The meter exists. It is decorative.
The day's confirmed total
Montaza Palace, built by King Fuad I in 1932, sits further along the coast in a mix of Ottoman and Florentine styles with public gardens running down to the water. Skipped it today: one day, three stops, and a garden requires more time than a garden gets credit for. Filed under next trip, not under regret.
Five confirmed dollars for a day that covered a 15th century fort, a library rebuilt out of stubbornness, and a stretch of coast road that never once agreed on a fare. The heat did what Mediterranean coastal heat does in the afternoon: sat there. Nothing about the total adds up to a lesson. It adds up to five dollars, and a receipt. ■
