Alexandria

Alexandria is not visited for antiquity, because there is almost none left — the lighthouse fell in the 14th century, the palaces are under the sea, the library burned. You come for the city the 20th century left on the Mediterranean: the Corniche, cafés from colonial times, fish at the market and a sea Cairo does not have. One day from Cairo by train is enough; two are better.

The train from Cairo is the easiest way: two and a half to three hours from Ramses station, air-conditioned in first class, with a ticket bought by foreigners at the counter or through the app. Coaches run the desert highway in the same time and arrive on the other side of the city. Coming for a day, take the first morning train and return on the seven o'clock; the city is long and everything worth seeing is on or near the Corniche, so the afternoon goes on taxi rides along the shore.

The Qaitbay citadel stands where the Pharos stood, one of the seven wonders, and was built in 1477 from its stone — the lighthouse blocks are visible in the walls. There is less inside than out, but the view from the ramparts over the eastern harbour and the whole Corniche is the best in the city. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, opened in 2002, is a building shaped like a sun disc rising from the sea, and what you look at inside is the building itself — a reading room on eleven levels under one roof. Tickets are charged per museum inside, from a hundred and fifty pounds for the main hall to three times that for everything.

The city worth having is between those two. The Délices and Trianon cafés from the 1920s, where you sit as if a century had not passed; the market in Anfushi with fish you choose and have grilled in the restaurant next door; the Kom el-Shoqafa catacombs, a three-storey Roman tomb discovered when a donkey fell through the ground in 1900. The Corniche is walked in the evening, when the city comes out for air, from Qaitbay to Stanley — ten kilometres, with a tram running parallel for whoever gives up.