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.

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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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