Three Days in Alexandria, Itemized
A 400 EGP train, a fort built from a fallen Wonder, eight million books, and fish priced by the kilo. Alexandria rewards travellers who keep receipts.
Day 1: The 8:00 from Ramses
The 8:00 AM Talgo out of Cairo Ramses costs 400 EGP ($8) in first class, booked two days ahead on the ENR app. Booking took a passport number and two attempts before my card went through. The ride is two hours and forty minutes across the Delta, flat green fields and irrigation canals the whole way, and we rolled into Alexandria's Misr Station 20 minutes late, which by Egyptian rail standards counts as early. Careem from the station to the Citadel of Qaitbay: 70 EGP ($1.40), fifteen minutes along the Eastern Harbour. Entry is 200 EGP ($4). Sultan Qaitbay put the fort up in 1477 on the footprint of the Pharos Lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and used the collapsed lighthouse's own blocks to do it. So the Wonder is technically still here. It has just been reorganized into a fort.
Day 2: Six Kilometres of Corniche
The Mediterranean is free. A chair facing it is 100 EGP. Somebody in Stanley understands margins.
Day 3: Eight Million Books and One Fish
Reality check
Book the Talgo on the ENR app a day ahead and screenshot the ticket; the app logs you out at random, and the Ramses ticket-window queue is its own day trip.
The damage, three days
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina opens at 10:00 and charges foreigners 100 EGP ($2), which buys eleven cascading reading levels and shelf space for eight million books, the best price-to-anything ratio in Egypt. Outside, the granite wall is carved with characters from 120 writing systems. Inside, actual students doing actual work, plus one tourist counting skylights. Lunch was Abou Ashraf on Safar Pasha Street in Bahari, where the day's fish sits on ice by the door and you pay by the kilo. Half a kilo of grilled sea bream with rice, tahini, baladi bread, and four salads came to 450 EGP ($9). No menu, no regrets. Kom El Shoqafa's catacombs were 20 minutes away, 220 EGP, and 99 steps down a spiral shaft, but I had a 6:00 PM train and a full stomach. The Romans will keep. Return Talgo to Ramses, another 400 EGP, in at 8:40. Three-day walking total: 41 kilometres, per my watch. ■
