Borg El Arab Airport Transfer — Alexandria and the North Coast

The airport is further out than you think

Borg El Arab is roughly forty kilometres from central Alexandria. That is not a taxi-rank-and-hope distance, particularly arriving in the evening, and particularly if your hotel is out on the Corniche rather than downtown.

A booked car with a fixed price removes the one negotiation you do not want to have after a flight, at an airport with fewer options than Cairo's.

The North Coast

In summer, a large share of arrivals at HBE are not going to Alexandria at all — they are heading west along the North Coast to Sidi Abdel Rahman, Marina, or one of the resort compounds strung along the Mediterranean.

Those are long drives on a fast road, and they are exactly the kind of leg where the vehicle matters. Tell us the destination when you book, not just "Alexandria", and we will put the right car on it.

Cairo to Alexandria by road

Plenty of visitors never fly into HBE at all: they land in Cairo and drive up. The Cairo–Alexandria run is a straightforward road journey and, for a family with luggage, usually a better answer than a domestic flight once you count the airport time at both ends.

It is also a day you can shape — Wadi El Natrun and the monasteries sit near the desert road, if you want to break the drive rather than just complete it.

Fast Track at Borg El Arab

Borg El Arab is one of the four Egyptian airports where Layali ElQahera provides Fast Track and meet-and-assist — with Cairo, Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada.

It is a smaller terminal than Cairo, so the queues are shorter on a good day; on a bad one, when several flights land together, the concentration is just as sharp and the assist is just as welcome.

What Alexandria is actually like

Alexandria is not a smaller Cairo. It is a Mediterranean city that happens to be in Egypt — a long corniche, sea air, a completely different pace, and a history that is Greek and Roman as much as it is pharaonic. Visitors who arrive expecting more pyramids are often surprised, usually pleasantly.

The things worth seeing are strung out along the waterfront: the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the Citadel of Qaitbay where the lighthouse once stood, the Roman amphitheatre, the catacombs at Kom El Shoqafa. They are far enough apart that a car and driver for the day is the sensible way to do it, and close enough together that a single day genuinely covers the city.

It also makes an easy day trip from Cairo if you would rather not move hotels — a long drive, but a straightforward one, and you are back the same evening.

Frequently asked questions