The hasslers at the airport don't look at the notes you give them (to get rid of them). In Egypt you can get notes that are as little as 5p in the UK (though hard to find). Particularly satisfying to give to the real bothersome hasslers.

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This is a bookbinders with elegant, great-value products covered in wonderful marbled paper - wastepaper bins, magazine/newspaper boxes, photograph albums and notebooks, tissue boxes. A refined shop, nowhere near as expensive as it looks. The magazine/paper tidies (I had two) are just the best things I have bought on my travels anywhere.

31, El-Sheikh Mohamed Abdou St
(at the side of Al-Azhar Mosque)

www.abdelzaherbinding.com

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This museum is situated within the citadel complex and therefore free to get in, once you have paid to go in the whole area. We nearly missed it, as we are not really into guns and both guide books were dismissive - 'OK for those with plenty of time and nothing better to do' was how one guide book recommended it. But it is a gem. It tells you everything, right from the beginning and how dynasties grew and diminished and the country emerged into how it is today. The building it is housed in is absolutely fab as well. Give yourself a minimum of an hour, better still two, and you won't regret it.

Within the walls of the Citadel.

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Often overlooked in favour of Giza, Saqqara is a far more varied archaeological site, and is much less crowded, both with tourists and the tat-hawkers that tend to go with them.

Here, you get to see the earliest pyramid – the so-called ‘Step Pyramid’, which is still impressive in size and is set in a partly-restored ‘complex’ of buildings. Various other pyramids in more or less romantically-ruinous states are scattered around the site, together with some of the most wonderfully decorated private tombs in Egypt.

With these, though, as with lots of sites in Egypt, it’s almost impossible to say what will be open and what won’t, because that information seems to change rather haphazardly. Get here under your own steam by a taxi from Cairo to make sure you can wander around the many acres of ruins without worrying about getting back on to a coach.

One thing not to miss is the pyramid of Unas – start at his pyramid and then walk down its ‘causeway’, which has private tombs built all around it.

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