Alexandria

Alexandria eats fish the way Cairo eats meat. In Abu Qir, twenty minutes east of the centre, the restaurants along the seafront put the catch on ice and you choose by hand — sea bass, bouri, red mullet, prawns — then say grilled or fried, and it arrives with tahina, salads, bread and rice. Reckon 350 to 600 EGP a kilo depending on the fish, and 600 to 900 for two people eating properly. Kadoura in Bahari does the same thing closer to town with a longer queue. Order the shrimp casserole if it is on, and confirm the weight and per-kilo price before anything leaves the counter.

Alexandria is a city with one long front, and walking it is the point. Start at Saad Zaghloul square by the old Cecil Hotel, where the tram terminates and the patisseries have been serving the same coffee and the same mille-feuille since the 1920s. Head east along the corniche past the fishing boats at Anfoushi and the Bibliotheca, and keep going to the Stanley bridge, which is about an hour at a stroll. Do it at dusk, when the whole city comes out to lean on the sea wall. Trams and microbuses run the same route for 5 to 10 EGP if your legs give out halfway.

The Bibliotheca is a 2002 building with an eleven-storey reading room tilted towards the sea and a granite skin carved with letters from every alphabet. Entry is around 200 EGP for foreign visitors and includes the antiquities and manuscript museums inside; allow two hours. Twenty minutes walk inland, Kom el-Dikka is the only substantial Roman site left in the city — a small marble amphitheatre, fifth-century lecture halls and mosaic villas, for about 150 EGP. Together they make a good half day, and they bracket the whole point of Alexandria: a city that keeps rebuilding a library it lost.