ADULTS 18+ ONLY GAY GUIDE TO ALEXANDRIA Shortcut tox Alex, xAswan, xCairo, xDahab, xLuxor, xSharmx orx Siwa. Once you've read this guide why not browse our new gay Alexandria message board - click here ! Or post a personal on our x Gay Middle East Bulletin Boards ! This is a guide to some of the best meeting places for gay men in Alexandria. Where any meeting place or hotel is mentioned below it is not meant to imply anything about the attitudes of management or staff. THE SEAFRONT An obvious choice of "cruising" locations is the stretch of Corniche from the city centre near the Cecil Hotel to the newly completed library. You might try in particular Al Togaria [ near the French Consulate on the corner of the Corniche with Sharia Mokadam ]. Don't be surprised to meet hustlers anywhere in the downtown area. It's also worth loitering near the eastern promitory of the Eastern Harbour, known as the Silsileh, where you should be able to meet students from the nearby university. In fact the whole 18km seafront from downtown Alexandria's Downtown area to Montazah offers opportunities either in the numerous ahwas or coffee houses or on the public beaches on which it's difficult to move in the summer without falling over or under young handsome holidaymakers. You might try an afternoon on Stanley Beach featured in many Egyptian films and a favourite of middle class families. If still in the area in the evening take a cruise along the impressive Stanley Bridge which is 276 metres long and towers 20 metres above the Mediterranean. Inaugurated by Suzanne Mubarak in 2001 it's already destined to be a favourite for romantics and gays alike. Also consider Miami Beach which draws the rougher trade who can't afford the fee paying beaches further east at Maamoura. You can use any one of the packed buses or minibuses which ply east-west along the Corniche. Minibuses which travel the whole length of the Corniche include No 735 [Ramle to Montazah] and No 736 [Midan Orabia to Maamoura]. Many others traverse large portions of the Corniche but be careful to know when the bus may vere inland. DOWNTOWN ALEX More promising, especially on crowded Thursday evenings, is the area around the Ramle Tram Station including the public toilets, the seats inside the telephone centre and the neighbouring Saad Zaghloul Square where you can sit around the statue and enjoy the cooling sea breeze. Here you can often make good friendships with students and other Alexandrians who hang out here but also be careful of hustlers and pickpockets. You can always go first to one of the nearby coffee houses before you venture anywhere more intimate. Overlooking the Square are two excellent four star hotels - The Cecil and Metropole - both splendiferous survivals from the art deco age - and ideally situated for those who want to mix luxury living with night time encounters. Next to the Cecil Hotel you will find the Cairo Bus Station Cafe popular with hustlers. It is so named because Zaghoul Square used to be Alexandria's main bus station. Now it's pleasant gardens act as a magnet to gay students and all types every evening especially in the summer and on Thursday evenings. If you are looking for a cheap place to stay and can't afford the Cecil or Metropole the area has many cheaper backpacking dives [ Click on Hotels in Alexandria ]. By reputation only, as I have yet to visit it, there is a disco popular with gays at the Amoun Hotel - atleast according to pride-holidays.com. Presumably they are refering to the three star Amoun hotel at 32 El Nasr Square in El Manshia. Please can some one e-mail me to let me know whether this is accurate ? If you want to find crowds of Egyptian men in one place you should try the Semouha Shopping Mall on Thursday evenings. It's about a four or five mile taxi ride south east of Downtown Alex. You can also do some shopping and use a busy internet cafe here for keeping in touch with your gay friends back home. If you want to combine some sightseeing with a bit of cruising try the small Roman Amphitheatre [ 0900 - 1600 ] on Sharia Yousef at the north end of Midan Gomhuriyya near the Downtown train station. The thirteen terraces had a capacity to sit seven hundred to eight hundred Romans but you'll be lucky to find that many available Alexandrians. Don't forget you can now use the Alexandria section of our Middle East Cities bulletin boards to post a gay personal ad ! CRUISING THE PARKS AND GARDENS Do visit the famous and very popular Montazah Park Gardens, about twelve miles east of the downtown area, which are very busy during afternoons, especially in the summer when many Egyptian gays come to Alexandria to escape the heat of Cairo and enjoy the neighbouring beaches. Unfortunately the gardens close at sunset ! It may also be worth trying some of the city's few other public parks. Alexandria has little green space compared to European cities so these parks are very popular. Perhaps the most promising but also most dilapidated are the Shallalat Gardens [ Waterfall Gardens ], 2km south east of the downtown area, [ ask the taxi driver for the Hadiqat Al-Shallalat ]. The gardens have lost much of their former elegance. The rock gardens are overgrown, the water canals are empty, graffiti adorns the now closed cafeteria and litter blows across the pathways. "There are no benches so lovers are left to balance precariously on the broken blocks that border the pathways," the newspaper Al Ahram noted recently. You might also try Nouzha Gardens, Sharia Semouha, Semouha [ Close to the zoological gardens and open 0800 to 1600 ]. There is a nominal fee of fifty piastres. It was here during the First World War that the writer E M Forster had his first assignation with a young tram driver he had discovered near Ramle tram station. The nearby Antoniadis Gardens are also worth visiting if you have time with beautiful flower beds and handsome Greek marble statues. ROUGH TRADE Alexandria's Ramle tram station [ see Downtown Alex above ] has a few rough types but they are outnumbered by students and professional "guides faux". If you are determined to find factory hands or lorry drivers, whatever the risk, you would do better to try the impoverished industrial district of Karmous south west of Alexandria's downtown railway station. The crowded but dark streets are overlooked by run-down apartment blocks, their windows lined with drying laundry. If you can dodge the horse drawn carts and cars, find a coffee shop and survey the street from a relatively safe vantage point. Needless to say, such safety is only relative. Whenever you cruise the streets in Egypt, please take great care. If dock hands, fishermen and sailors are your predilection then you might venture instead towards the Western Harbour, though you risk being flattened by a container lorry or being challenged by the police, so try to have a waterproof excuse. The consequences of arrest, as always in Egypt, can be a lot worse than a mere nuisance. ALEXANDRIA'S GAY HISTORY DID YOU KNOW ? - It was in Alexandria in 1917 aged 40 that the writer E.M.Forster (Famous for a "A Passage to India" and "Maurice") had his first real sexual experience with an 18 year old tram conductor. Afterwards he wrote - "I am so happy - not for the actual pleasure but because the last barrier has fallen." No wonder Ramle tram station is still so popular with gay tourists today. IF YOU HAVE TIME - visit the museum of the famous gay poet Constantine Cavafy who spent much of his life in the building and used to bring rent boys back home who he found in the near by Rue Missala ( now sharia Safiya Zaghloul ). "Where could I better live ?" Cavafy wrote, "Below, the brothel caters for the flesh. And there is the church which forgives sin. And there is the hospital where we die." Cavafy was born in 1863 and is famous for many poems, many of them sad evocations of his sense of isolation and loneliness, including the "City" and "God Abandons Antony." You can find the museum at 4 Sharia Sharm al-Sheikh between the railway station and the downtown area. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 3pm. Oh, and I shouldn't forget, if you're in Alexandria on a Sunday and a budding poet why not visit the Poetry Club [ no suggestion however of it necessarily being gay friendly ] which meets at 6.30pm at the Horreya Cultural Palace at 1 Horreya Avenue in Downtown Alex. The Cecil Hotel in Downtown Alex approaches something like iconic status for the gay historian being the watering hole for such gay literati as Noel Coward and Somerset Maugham. Now you've read this guide why not browse our new gay Alexandria message board - click here ! For our comprehensive hotel listings and reviews please click on either Alexandria - five star hotels or Alexandria - all other hotels TYPICAL WEATHER - AVERAGE MINIMUM AND MAXIMUM TEMPERATURES (C) Jan 11-18 March 13-11 May 18-26 July 23-30 Sept 23-29 Nov 17-25 Skip to xAlex 5* hotels xAlex other hotels xAswan xDowntown Cairo xSuburban Cairo xGiza & the Pyramids xDahab xLuxor xSharm xSiwa Oasis x10 best ways to find sex. Warning: Gay sex or any homosexual activity puts you at risk of arrest, deportation or imprisonment and all sexual encounters are undertaken at your own risk. For more general information on the history, culture and sites of Alexandria you can click on any of the following web site links - |
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| - book a room through Pride-Holidays. |
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| - book a room with Pride-Holidays. |
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| - book a room with Pride-Holidays. |
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| - for other hotels click on the Alex link on our hotels page. |
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