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Drinking
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If you don't mind paying over the odds, the nicest place to sink a cold Stella beer is the garden terrace of the
Winter Palace.
The next best is the
Mina Palace
's terrace, on the Corniche, where the ambience is less grand but the view is good and the prices reasonable. For a livelier atmosphere, visit the
King's Head Pub
on Sharia Ibn Khalid Walid (daily 9am-3am) - which offers meals, cocktails (A?E12), Stella (A?E8), darts and billiards - or the
Venus Hotel,
where the excellent
Mars Bar
sells local (A?E6) and imported draught beer, and has satellite TV, a pool table and Western music. There are ritzier
bars
in all the big hotels - in particular, the elegant
Royal Bar
in the
Winter Palace.
Imported beer and spirits cost a fortune in hotels, but a modest sum at
duty-free shops
, where you pay in hard currency. There's a flourishing black market in which tourists buy booze for middlemen, who sell it to hotels (whose official quota doesn't cover their needs). Visitors can buy duty-frees twice: in the arrivals section of the airport, and then at the duty-free shop in town (daily 10am-3pm & 7pm-midnight). You'll need your passport, in which the transaction(s) will be noted. The cheapest buy is Borzon vodka (US$4). Egyptian beer and spirits can be purchased at an inconspicuous liquor shop near the cinema on Sharia al-Mahatta. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Egypt,
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