article_snippet: The long-haired ones don't come any more.'
article_snippet: The old parts are all a bluey-purple, as if the entire medina has been flushed with ink.
article_snippet: Europeans left cafes, cannon, art deco, a long corniche and a whole cemetery of kind hearts and baronets.
article_snippet: There's still a piano bar at The El-Minzah (Churchill and Rex Harrison), although the Hotel Cecil (Tennessee Williams) now has palm trees growing through the roof.
article_snippet: Others came to misbehave, particularly the Beat poets.
article_snippet: Although Dean's Bar was wreathed in dust and padlocks, you can still get a whiff of the Fifties at Cafe Baba.
article_snippet: My favourite is the old American legation of 1821.
article_snippet: There are log fires and almond cake for tea, and time seems to have paused at 1956.
article_snippet: John Gimlette is the winner of the Dolman Travel Book Prize 2012, with Wild Coast: Travels On South America's Untamed Edge (Profile £8.99).