Alexandria on a Thursday

Thursday in Alexandria is not a working day for much of the city, and it changes the whole texture of the place. The offices empty out by one. The corniche fills with people who have come for the evening, not the sun.

This is the day to be there.

The morning: the fish

Alexandrian fish arrives from the boats in the early hours and the best of it is sold by noon. Look for the shops along the Corniche with the marble counters and no sign in English — order the pickled fish with vegetables (pickle), the grilled sardaella if it is winter, or the squid, which here is served stuffed with rice and tomato sauce and is nothing like the calamari you get elsewhere.

The fish is fried or grilled, never steamed, and it is served with bread and nothing else. This is correct.

The afternoon: the library and the citadel

The Bibliotheca is a good place to disappear into for two hours. The manuscript museum inside has the Papyrus Scroll, and the building itself, floating on the water with a sloped concrete roof that is a quotation of the Bibliotheca at Alexandria that disappeared two thousand years ago, is the point.

Then go up the hill to Qaitbay, where the fort's walls are still in the state the fifteenth century left them, and stand on the ramparts with the two harbours below and the Mediterranean beyond.

The evening: the corniche

From Qaitbay, walk south along the corniche. It takes an hour and a half and you will want to keep stopping. Look at the men playing chess in the sand. Look at the wedding party posing in front of the battleship. Look at the fisherman selling his catch from a cart at the side of the road.

Buy a karkade — hibiscus tea, sweet and red and served in a glass — from a cart, and drink it sitting on the wall above the sea.

Food, generally

Alexandria is a city of excellent fish and very good breakfasts. For breakfast, go to a baladi place near the railway station and have foul medames with tahina, a pot of tea, and bread that was baked an hour ago. Around 25 Egyptian pounds, and it is the correct price.

The people who look for "seafood restaurants with English menus" are making a mistake. The places with the menus in Arabic and the handwritten prices are the ones worth eating in.