Cairo travel guide and things to do: Why visitors to Egypt shouldn't skip the huge capital city

Cairo is a pulsating megalopolis of 25 million.Credit: iStock

The last surprising "Wonder of the Ancient World". The liveliest of lively street cultures. Fabulous and affordable historic, luxury hotels. A familiar golden backstory prominent in school curriculums around the globe. Cairo, the chaotic but captivating Egyptian capital, is the megalopolis that seems to have it all.

This city, like a colossal bowerbird, has spent millennia sequestering new treasures left in the wake of a parade of invaders from Persia to Macedonia, Assyria to Rome, more recently France and Britain, the last colonial power, to be dispatched in 1956.

Yet for years this dusty jewel in the desert has largely languished in the wilderness of world tourism due to ongoing political instability and controversies, including the summary incarceration of Australian journalist Peter Greste, and of course the pandemic.

Notwithstanding those issues, the clock is ticking on Cairo's overdue return to the bosom of the world traveller. The timing couldn't be better.

This year, or what remains of it, marks the year Cairo returns to the sun with Egypt's presidential-style government talking a big game on safety, new infrastructure of epic proportions, and a series of blockbuster openings and anniversaries that make a stay in Cairo one of the hottest tickets in town.

Yet while tours down Egypt's River Nile are bucket-list stalwarts, sprawling Cairo is often given a bare 24 hours in travellers' itineraries, or worse, even shoehorned into a half-day tour on the way to the airport.

Skip this pulsating megalopolis of 25 million and you're missing the chance to immerse yourself in a rich and layered tagine of histories, architecture, culture, food and ideas that have educated and inspired the world, and no less myself.

"Bringing together ancient history and bustling modern life, Cairo is the perfect launch pad for those eager to explore Egypt's charm," says Sarah Clark, managing director of Intrepid Travel.

As a former resident of the capital and serial returnee due to personal connections, I can identify with the love affair to which Clark refers. As she further points out, Egypt ranks as the third most popular international destination for Australian travellers this year to date with this "love affair" predicted to continue well into 2023.

Before 2011, tourism was Egypt's largest earner of foreign income after the Suez Canal. Buffeted by revolutions and counter-revolutions, the country has been roiled by political and security upheavals, each occurring just as its fragile tourism industry began stumbling to its feet.

So what is Cairo like now? One of the world's biggest megalopolises, the suburbs are flush with gargantuan shopping malls that wouldn't look out of place in the US. Then there are the clubs and restaurants where the fashion for women is tiny and tight, and burgeoning liberal attitudes hark back to this city's miniskirt-clad 1960s.

Come with us on a tour of Cairo in the form of Traveller's up-to-the-minute insider's guide to the best ancient and modern attractions of "the city of a thousand minarets".

MONUMENTAL MUSEUMS

Credit: Egyptian Tourism Authority

No-one does a museum quite like Egypt; the sprawling, pink Egyptian Museum of Antiquities sits in the heart of downtown Cairo's Tahrir Square. Built in 1901, it's still Cairo's landmark museum, and it's always been an iceberg – only 10 per cent showing, the rest stored below decks. See egymonuments.gov.eg

Competing for air are the NMEC or National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation (nmec.gov.eg), which opened last year, and the yet-to-open and much-anticipated Grand Egyptian Museum, or the GEM.

Together, they will share Egypt's many inconceivably priceless treasures, which are hauled out of storage - or even from beneath a sand dune - and showcased in what will become the holy trinity of Egyptian museums. Undoubtedly, the GEM is the one to rule them.

For the past few years, Egypt's treasures have been transferred across the country to the GEM, billed as the world's biggest collection of ancient Egyptian relics. The 4600-year-old cedarwood ship, the Solar Boat of Cheops, which was discovered in a pit beside the Pyramids of Giza in 1954, moved from its ramshackle home into the GEM last year.

Its stately transition echoes the journey of the 75-tonne, red granite colossus of the pharaoh Ramses II, discovered in the ancient capital of Memphis, outside Cairo.

For years, it sat in front of Cairo's main train station in Ramses Square, and in 2018 literally stopped the traffic as it moved through the streets to its new home in the vast foyer of the GEM. While the icon of Egypt, King Tutankhamun's gold death mask, is still in the Egyptian Museum, the hefty 10-kilogram mask has had its measurements taken for its pending journey to the GEM.

This year marks 100 years since archaeologist Howard Carter discovered King Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings to the west of Luxor, 500 kilometres due south of Cairo. It's also 200 years since the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, found in the Nile Delta town of Rosetta (known today as Rashid) and now one of the star attractions of the British Museum.

The world has been promised the GEM for nine years and finally, November 2022 looks like it's becoming a reality. At least, in part, with the full opening next year. (It was hoped the GEM would open on November 4, a century to the day that Carter found the door of the boy king's tomb).

Meanwhile visit the NMEC and its Golden Mummies. After holding court at the Egyptian Museum for generations, the 22 mummies were moved with all the pomp of a royal ceremony in the Golden Parade in April 2021, from downtown Cairo to their new, subterranean home in the Cairo district of Fustat.

The mummies, including king Ramses II and Egypt's most famous female pharaoh, Queen Hatshepsut, are interred in a highly-technical building that will preserve their futures. See nmec.gov.eg

Don't forget the beautiful Museum of Islamic Art in the medieval quarter that is Islamic Cairo. Restored in 2016 after the turbulent fallout from the Egyptian revolution, it houses one of the most comprehensive collections of Islamic art, from China to Iran to Spain and across the Arab world. See miaegypt.org

THE VIBRANT NEIGHBOURHOODS

Credit: Abercrombie ~amp~ Kent

Once a burial ground of kings located on the edge of civilisation, the Pyramids of Giza are now enmeshed within the Middle East's largest city. With the new GEM right beside them, the intention was to create a so-called "Pyramids precinct".

Here you'll find the Marriott Mena House hotel (marriott.com), the Steigenberger hotels (steigenberger.com) and a welter of little rooftop bars and other budget hotels, all angling for a view of those ancient wonders. (See below for more hotel information).

From next year, the Pyramids will also be serviced by the Sphinx International Airport, a former military airport on the western side of the city, now updated for tourism. Pundits tip it will not reach full capacity until the GEM is open, allowing the possibility of quick day trips to visit the GEM and the Pyramids of Giza.

Elsewhere, new metro lines under construction will also connect the Pyramids to downtown Cairo and eventually Cairo International Airport. The deadline? Best ask President Sisi but work on the metro and a new monorail is visible throughout the entire, gridlocked city.

In a clear sign this revival is really happening, the sleek new King Khufu visitor centre opened beside the Pyramids of Giza just weeks ago, with an Egyptian fusion restaurant and lounge and a VIP excursion hub.

It can be reached by new hop-on, hop-off electric buses running between the main pyramids and temples, the Sphinx and a new panorama viewing site. For anyone who's been chased by a camel handler or carriage driver, this can only be described as a godsend.

With food courts, event spaces and even a boulevard planned – via bridge or underground – linking the GEM to the Pyramids, it's clear the Pyramids precinct is a never-ending story.

South of the Pyramids of Giza and even older, the necropolis of Saqqara is hot property in the archaeology world at the moment, its most recent find yielding 250 painted coffins dating back 2500 years.

"There are more than six excavation teams working in Saqqara at the moment and every now and then we hear of a new discovery," says Ahmed Aziz, Egyptologist and owner of Cairo-based tour company High End Journeys.

"Architecturally, it's very different to the Valley of the Kings, and rather than tombs of royalty, we're discovering tombs for high priests and nobles. It's not gigantic, but it has its own charm," says Aziz.

"If I had to pick one to visit, I'd say the tomb of the High Priest Mehu. It reopened a couple of years ago and requires an extra ticket visit, but it shows the daily life of Egyptian workers and the colours are unique."

The Step Pyramid of Djoser has also reopened after a 14-year renovation, with one of the entrances included in its public ticket. It offers the "experience of being beneath the world's oldest stone structure", says Aziz.

Further south again, the most famous landmark of the Dahshur necropolis is the Bent Pyramid. Closed for 53 years until late 2019, the pyramid has a 70-metre tunnel leading into its heart, which is twice the length of the tunnel into the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Sitting solitarily on the desert plain, the pyramid was a practice run for its architects, who messed up the angles and realised only half-way through construction. Its correction, mid-build, is the reason for its shonky angles.

"The tunnel into the Bent Pyramid is one of the hardest entrances into a pyramid I have ever done," says Aziz, who took me into the tunnel the first day it reopened. "If you do that, you can do anything in life."

THE COOLEST TASTES AND TOURS

Dining near the Pyramids has always been an uncertain proposition but 9 Pyramids Lounge is one of the most exciting new restaurants for travellers since the Cairo Tower started revolving in the 1960s.

The lounge is the only cafe inside the fenced-off Pyramids of Giza. It's far from the madding crowds and offers an uninterrupted view of all nine pyramids. Drop in for breakfast before visiting the pyramids, or finish your tour with lunch: the must-eat is the flaky feteer served hot from the oven.

Egyptian food often gets swamped in the proto-Arabian dishes of kebab, kofta and hummus. It's almost as though Egyptians are happy to keep it that way, with most of its classic dishes found only in the home, or in hole-in-the-wall workers' diners well off the beaten track.

However, a recent addition to the Cairo food scene takes you there: skip lunch (and probably breakfast, too) to hit the streets hungry with fabulous women-led tour group Bellies En Route. See belliesenroute.com

Its walking tours show you how to eat koshary, where to try sugarcane juice, sip freshly roasted cardamom-scented coffee or grab a street snack of hawawshi (Egypt's take on the meat pie). The four-hour tours cost $US80 ($116) a person.

Alternatively, to get a genuine hit of Egyptian home cooking, another recent addition is the woman-run Tablia Baladi in downtown Cairo serving traditional Egyptian dishes in its modest street cafe. Known also as the Five Ladies after its five cook-owners, this is the place to try molokhia (a garlicky, spinach-like super soup), a rich, delicious fattah (rice and lamb) or push it with kawareh (cow's hoof) on a menu that changes daily.

THE HOTTEST AND MOST HISTORIC STAYS

Like most of the world, Cairo's hotel scene has been more or less comatose in recent years but that will change with significant floor-by-floor renovations in two of the city's high-end hotels, namely the Four Seasons Hotel Cairo at The First Residence (fourseasons.com), where you can see the Pyramids in the distance, and the super-luxe Four Seasons Nile Plaza, in the centre of the city.

In comparison, the aforementioned Marriott Mena House, set by the main gates of the Pyramids at Giza, is beloved by foreigners for its location and its history.

Built as a hunting lodge that's been extended over its 150-year lifespan, the original building, now dubbed "the palace wing", has been closed while it undergoes extensive renovation. It's expected to reopen in March 2023.

Guests can share rooms that have hosted kings and emperors, and everyone from Winston Churchill and Agatha Christie to Charlie Chaplin and Cecil B. DeMille when filming The Ten Commandments. However, its modern Pyramid View wing still has its own ample charms.

If your budget doesn't stretch that far, the Chinese-owned Steigenberger Pyramids Cairo and its sister property next door, Cairo Pyramids Hotel, are both four-star hotels within walking distance of the Pyramids of Giza.

Staying on the western side of the necropolis, a new Hyatt Regency Cairo West (hyatt.com) is on the right side of town for easy access to Giza, as is Egypt's first Crowne Plaza (ihg.com), the Crowne Plaza West Cairo-Arkan, near the sprawling Mall of Arabia.

FIVE MORE CLASSIC CAIRO MUSTS

COPTIC CAIRO

Ornate early Christian and Coptic (Orthodox) churches are wrought into a maze; discover where it's said the Holy Family sheltered on their Flight into Egypt as they escaped Herod's army.

KHAN AL-KHALILI AND SUFIS

Shop hard and frequent the cafes of this market that's been trading since the 14th century, and add on a sufi dance at the nearby Wekalet el Ghouri.

SHARIA AL-MU'IZZ

At sunset, the palaces and mosques of medieval Cairo's most important thoroughfare are floodlit for a spectacular display.

THE NILE

Credit: Abercrombie ~amp~ Kent

Take a one-hour felucca (boat) ride on the iconic river, or drink in the view from the many restaurants and rooftop bars on its banks.

THE PYRAMIDS

They are the reason Cairo has been on the world's bucket list since Herodotus was a fourth-century BC backpacker, and long before Thomas Cook launched its first brochure for a Grand Tour of Egypt in 1869. Add on a side trip to the pyramids of Saqqara and Dahshur and the ancient capital, Memphis (Mit Rahina).

THE DETAILS

FLY

The fastest way to Cairo is via the Middle Eastern hubs of Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Qatar. Cairo is just 3.5 hours from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

HEALTH

Egypt adopted the "living with COVID" route early in the pandemic. There are no checks or vaccination requirements, masks are more commonly used by older people and those at risk. RATs are not easily available in Egypt.

VISAS

Australians can buy a 30-day, single-entry visa on arrival for $USD25 ($37.60), payable in US dollars, euros or British pounds sterling. Exact change is preferred, or change will be paid out in Egyptian pounds (usually at a pretty average exchange rate). Alternatively, pre-book your visa at visa2egypt.gov.eg

TOUR

High End Journeys (highendjourneys.com), Abercrombie & Kent (abercrombiekent.com.au) or Intrepid Travel (intrepidtravel.com)

MORE

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The writer has been a guest of Abercrombie & Kent, Bellies en Route, High End Journeys and has also travelled at her own expense.