Is Alexandria Overrated? 10 Brutally Honest Reasons Why You Should Go!

The Salt-Crusted Truth

I’ve been sitting in the same plastic chair at a nameless café in Bahary for three hours. The Mediterranean is currently throwing a tantrum, spraying greyish mist over the Corniche, and the smell of diesel and grilled octopus is sticking to my skin. Someone once told me Alexandria is “the Pearl of the Mediterranean.” That person was definitely a travel agent who had never spent a Tuesday afternoon trying to cross the street near Mahatet el Raml without losing a limb.

Is Alexandria overrated? If you’re looking for a sanitized, five-star resort experience with infinity pools and English-speaking concierge staff who laugh at your jokes, then yes. It’s horribly overrated. It’s loud, crumbling, chaotic, and the humidity will turn your hair into a structural hazard. But if you are the kind of person who wants to disappear into a city that doesn’t care if you’re there or not—a place where the past and the present are locked in a violent, beautiful embrace—then Alexandria is the only place in Egypt that matters.

I’ve spent the last four months living out of a carry-on and a series of high-ceilinged apartments with creaky floorboards. I’ve learned how to buy bread by shouting at a basket lowered from a fourth-floor balcony and where to find the only reliable fiber-optic connection in a three-mile radius. Here is the brutally honest reality of the bride of the sea.

1. The “Old Money” Ghost Aesthetic

Alexandria isn’t a museum; it’s a living ruin. You walk through the Latin Quarter and see these Belle Époque mansions that look like they belonged to a Greek shipping tycoon in the 1920s. Now, they’re covered in satellite dishes and laundry. The “reason” to go isn’t to see a restored monument, but to witness the decay. There is a specific melancholy here that you won’t find in Cairo. It’s the feeling of a party that ended fifty years ago, and everyone just decided to stay and keep drinking the leftover wine. If you can’t appreciate the beauty of a peeling plaster wall, stay in Dubai.