Alexandria is one of Egypt's easiest cities to travel alone: a 20km seafront you can walk end to end, tram lines instead of taxi haggling, and coffeehouses where sitting alone with a book is completely normal. Locals will start the conversation for you.
A 1922 Belgian-founded café on Saad Zaghloul Square, still all mirrors, marble and waiters in waistcoats. Open from 07:00, it is the standard solo breakfast: order coffee and a croissant, take a window table facing the square, and nobody rushes you.
Alexandria's blue and yellow trams run from Raml Station east to Victoria and west to Ras El Tin. A single ticket is a few pounds, carriages are slow and crowded, and the second-class car is the cheapest street-level tour of the city you can take alone.
A restored Italianate villa on Horreya Street holding roughly 1,800 pieces across three floors — Pharaonic in the basement, Greco-Roman on the ground floor, Coptic and Islamic above. Small enough to do alone in two unhurried hours, air-conditioned and rarely busy.
The four-towered bridge arcing over Stanley Bay is where Alexandrians come at sunset. Walking it alone is entirely normal — families, students and couples all doing the same. The upper promenade gives the best view back at the beach cabins below.
One of the few genuine backpacker hostels in the city, in an old downtown apartment building near Nabi Daniel Street. Dorm beds are cheap, the rooftop and shared kitchen are where guests actually talk, and staff organise informal walking groups most mornings.
The city's most famous foul and taameya house since 1957, a few streets back from Saad Zaghloul. Shared tables, no reservations, plates of fava beans, fried aubergine and falafel landing in minutes. Eating alone here is the norm at lunchtime.
The old Attarine district behind Horreya Street is a warren of furniture restorers, brass dealers and junk shops selling leftovers of cosmopolitan Alexandria. Browsing alone invites tea offers from shopkeepers — accept one, it is how conversations start here.
A narrow art-nouveau bar off Saad Zaghloul with a zinc counter, old mirrors and Stella beer served with grilled shrimp. Regulars are Alexandrian men in their sixties and the occasional traveller; solo drinkers are struck up conversation with quickly.
Roughly 150 acres of pine and palm gardens around King Farouk's Haramlik Palace on the eastern headland. Paths run down to private coves and the Salamlek bridge; wandering alone for a couple of hours here is the quietest thing to do in Alexandria.
The 1477 Mamluk fortress built on the rubble of the Pharos lighthouse, at the tip of the Eastern Harbour breakwater. Empty stone chambers, spiral stairs and roof terraces facing open sea — an easy solo climb with fishermen lining the causeway outside.
A 2nd-century AD tomb complex spiralling 35 metres underground, with a Roman-Egyptian burial chamber, the Hall of Caribalis and hundreds of loculi. Descending the spiral staircase alone is genuinely eerie; visits take about an hour with the shaft and museum.
The 3km stretch of seafront between the citadel and Raml Station is the classic solo evening walk: fishermen on the sea wall, corn sellers, spray from the breakwater. Well lit, busy until late, and one of the safest night walks in Egypt.