- Egypt
- (148)
-
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.
I know a lot of people in the UK are still nervous about visiting Egyptian resorts, but I'd highly recommend it. Sharm El Sheikh is perhaps the best-known diving town, but it is not the only option. Hurghada is also an excellent place to visit.
The town is growing quickly and is becoming more and more popular from year to year. A lot of building work is also going on in the town and it is becoming a popular area for people looking for property investments. I'd recommend visiting.
Hurghada, Egypt
www.hurghada.com
A lovely hotel set on an island in the Nile, around 10 minutes from the centre of Luxor. The views are stunning - especially at sunset, unobstructed (no huge Nile cruise ships anchor there) - sit on your terrace with a cocktail and enjoy.
A welcome escape from the hustle (and hassle) of Luxor!
Crocodile Island, Luxor
Change money on arrival in the airport currency exchange due to a better rate.
The building housing this wonderful collection of antiquities is purpose-built for the job. Although the number of items on display there is fewer than in Cairo Museum, I think that these exquisite pieces have been selected for their importance and beauty. The lighting of all exhibits is really superb. This gem is not to be missed, but if you're pushed for time you could go in the evening as they stay open quite late.
Konish el-nil, East bank
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
If you are planning to spend time in Sharm el-Sheikh and will not be going anywhere other than the Aqaba coast or St. Catherine's monastery, you do not need an Egyptian visa for which you will spend a lot of time standing in line for to change money to buy it and then to get the actual visa.
Just go directly to passport control. I've been here a couple of times and I've seen everyone paying for these visas, when they have no intention to either leave the resort or the Aqaba coast. The Egyptians are very happy to let entire planeloads of tourists pay for a visa they will not need.
Great food at resonable prices. Staff are friendly and have a sense of humour, and the whole place is spotless. Ask for Captain Nemo - he can fix anything from boat rides to balloon trips and airport transfers. If he can't do it he knows someone who can, he knows everyone.
Opposite the Nile Palace is Passport Street, next door to Murphys Bar.
Ruined tombs cut into the cliffs overlooking the Nile. Wonderfully romantic - you'll feel you're in 'The English Patient'. No tour-groups, just you, the pillared halls, the hieroglyphs, the desert, and the views. Easy to get to with a short sail by local felucca (ask for Nassir Ramadan on the corniche by the Ferial Gardens).
On the west bank of the Nile opposite Aswan.
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.
The Red Sea is one of the most colourful diving environments - loads of reefs and coral formations, plus for beginners there is a 'sunken statue' at Hurghada. Rent somewhere near Sahl Hasheesh for the statue dive.
www.redseacollege.com/indexh.html
www.propertyforge.com/propertyinegypt.htm
touregypt.net/vdc/
Tourists to Egypt hear much of Akhenaten, the probable father of Tutankhamun, who tried to replace worship of the traditional Egyptian gods with a sort of monotheism devoted to the sun-disk.
Objects from his reign form one of the most spectacular displays in the Cairo Museum but few ever visit his short lived capital city at Tell el-Amarna (which gives its name to the period and the artistic style of the times). Little remains of the city itself (although the setting is highly atmospheric) but the tombs of the king and his courtiers in the cliffs and wadis to the east are among the finest in the country, and mercifully free of marauding tourists – I was the only person at the site the day I visited.
A visit requires several hours and is probably best arranged as part of a stop-over in the nearby city of el-Minya (150 miles south of Cairo) which has several comfortable hotels. A military escort is required to travel through this part of the country although there is no real threat – it’s more like getting the VIP treatment.
There are actually a handful of modern engineering wonders scattered around Egypt, for fans of that sort of thing.
The Aswan High Dam and the Bond-villain-style ‘false mountain’ built for the relocated Abu Simbel temples are two obvious examples.
Another is this ‘Friendship Bridge’, built with largely Japanese money, spanning the Suez Canal and carrying the road link to the Sinai peninsula. Our coach from Port Said to Ismailia (going alongside the canal) took a diversion just to go over the bridge, turn right around and come back across.
The main span over the river is only a few hundred metres, but there is a ‘run up’ of almost two kilometres on either side. The bridge looks cool rising out of the desert as you approach and then the crossing gives you – briefly - a chance to look directly out over the length of the Suez Canal.
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.
For non-beach orientated things to do, the size and decoration of the Kom el-Shuqafa catacombs will remind you of a Spielberg film.
As for food, the Kadora (pronounced A-Dora) and the fish market offer some of the best seafood in Egypt.
A pleasant way to end a day's exploring is to take a calèch ride from near the Cecil Hotel, along the Western harbour, and then retrace your route on foot for a bite to eat at the fish market.
If you can afford it, I would suggest splashing out and getting a room at the Sheraton Montazah.
The fact that it's on the edge of town might make it inconvenient for
some, but I found it eliminated most of the noise from the downtown
area, while still providing a major thoroughfare for catching a cab.
Its private, wonderfully under-populated beach, and a room with a balcony overlooking both the Montazah Palace gardens and the
Mediterranean were also welcome perks.
www.starwoodhotels.com/sheraton/property/overview/index.html?propertyID=438
Giza can be a nightmare. Its atmosphere has been ruined by the road, the coaches, the thousands of tourists and a seemingly equal number of Egyptians offering tacky souvenirs and camel rides at inflated prices. This is no coincidence however, it being the site at which the pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty at last nailed the art of pyramid building.
One of their predecessors, Sneferu, did much of the ground work however. He erected two monuments of his own at the much quieter site of Dahshur, a few miles south of Giza.
The earlier of the two is the ‘bent’ pyramid, so-named because the king’s architect got his sums wrong and had to change the angle of incline halfway up. The second, the ‘red’ pyramid was an unqualified success: a straight sided pyramid, smaller only than the great pyramid itself.
The interior of the red pyramid with its corbel vaulted ceiling is well worth a look, and the bent-pyramid preserves much of the outer casing that was stripped from the Giza pyramids centuries ago. The lack of tourists gives you a chance to take in the immensity of these monuments.
Although you kind of have to go to Giza, I highly recommend seeing Dahshur as well – it’s what Giza ought to be like.
Although millions of tourists visit the west bank at Luxor every year the area is so rich in archaeology that it is not difficult to find quiet and equally spectacular monuments away from the hordes.
Just across the road from the bazaars and the coach-park at the Hatshepsut temple a jumble of mud-brick remains marks the cemetery of el-Asasif, site of some of the largest and most spectacular tombs anywhere in the country.
Three of its tombs are open to the public: that of Kheruef of the 18th Dynasty, and those of Pabasa and Ankh-hor of the 26th. Their subterranean ‘sun-courts’ are unique to this area, and each of the tombs preserves beautiful relief decoration of varying styles.
I would highly recommend taking a walk from here back to the road through the crumbling remains of tombs yet to be investigated; at the road I recommend hailing one of the local service taxis and riding back to the river with the locals for a few piasters, rather than taking a private car for 100 times the price.
Egypt decided some years ago that it was relatively unsafe to allow tourists to travel outside the established tourist centres; as a result several isolated, but nonetheless spectacular sites in between Cairo, Luxor and Aswan are infrequently visited.
For those looking for archaeological adventures away from the hordes, I highly recommend making arrangements (in hotels or with taxi drivers) to join the daily convoy down-river (north) from Luxor to see Dendera and Abydos. The former is the site of one of Egypt’s best preserved monuments, the Ptolemaic and Roman temple of Dendera, with scenes of Cleopatra VII (the Cleopatra) and her son Ceasarion; at the latter the atmospheric temple of Sety I and his son Ramesses the Great features some of the most beautiful relief decoration anywhere in Egypt.
The drive is fairly lengthy but provides an excellent opportunity to see the Egyptian countryside.
Travelling through the Nile delta from Cairo gives a very different perspective on the country from the usual boat trip down the Nile.
Arriving at Tell Basta, now a suburb of Zagazig) provides an idea of how the ruins across the whole country may once have looked (a true Ozymandias moment). This monumental site (once the home of a huge temple structure dedicated to the cat goddess Bastet) accommodated religious festivals that numbered hundreds of thousands of participants, now it is little more than a field of rubble.
However, if you have been to any of the great temple structures (Luxor, Karnak etc) you will be able to see the layout and structure of the site through the debris. The lack of tourists, combined with the thrill of identifying key elements within the site, as well as coming across the scattered remains of monumental statues, secured this as one of the most unique parts of our Egyptian trip. There is also an interesting cat necropolis on the site.
Send your feedback or queries to been.there@guardian.co.uk
Search Been there
