What to See and Do in Cairo

THE LANDMARKS

As the one remaining Ancient Wonder of the World, the GIZA PYRAMIDS are one of the world's most truly spectacular sights. They date from 2570BC and are still fascinating today, especially due to their mysterious construction. Going on a tour is a must.

MODERN ART

The Townhouse Gallery shows the more contemporary side of Cairo, with photography, video, and film exhibitions mostly by local artists.

CLASSIC ART

The Egyptian Museum has been showing all of the country's great treasures for over a century. It has the world's most extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities, and with so much to show, a large part of it remains in storage awaiting the construction of a larger space. But what you'll find on display is enough to awe you for hours, especially the fabulous jewelry, the mummy rooms, and King Tutankhamun's stunning collection. To get the most out of the visit, you can go on a private tour.
The Coptic Museum is houses another important collection, the world's largest of Christian or pre-Islamic Egypt artwork. Particularly interesting are the Christian scenes with Egyptian gods.
You may also want to take a look at the Museum of Islamic Arts, with pieces from all over the Islamic world, such as ceramics, woodwork, crystal, and textiles.

STRIKING ARCHITECTURE

The CAIRO TOWER was the world's largest concrete structure when it was completed in 1961. It still stands out in the city's skyline today, and you can go to the top for city views and a drink or meal at the café and restaurant.

ANCIENT SITE

The 12th century CITADEL is home to the 19th century Muhammad Ali Mosque, known for its huge dome and tall minarets. From the courtyard you'll have one of the best views over Cairo, and the wonderful atmosphere will make you want to stay for a few hours.

CITY LIFE

You'll find as many tourists as locals at the bustling KHAN EL KHALILI BAZAAR, a must-do experience for the variety of products (from crafts to spices) on sale, for a stop at the many cafes, and above all, to enjoy the haggling with a good dose of sense of humor.
Finally, the perfect way to end a visit to Cairo is going down the Nile on a cruise. You'll see traditional lateen-rigged sailboats called Falucas by the docks offering rides at reasonable prices, or you can go on a pre-booked Nile cruise.

TOURS & DAYTRIPS

Go on an organized tour of Cairo and the Pyramids and easily see the best of the city and its ancient wonders.
From Cairo, most tourists also move on to the temples and other Egyptian wonders in Luxor and Aswan




.

Visit The great Pyramids & the Sphinx on the run

Visit The great Pyramids & the Sphinx on the run


Do you dream of the pyramids but your charter flight is to Luxor ? here is your dream trip , you can fly domestically from Luxor & back in the same day it is only 1 hour flight , do not hesitate make your dream possible , you don't have to delay it until your next visit to Egypt , you take an early morning flight & you com back in the evening . you will wonder around the great Pyramids of Giza and the legendary sphinx as the massive Egyptian museum, and you end up by a walk around Cairo's famous market &old bazaars known as khan khalili , your first and last in the country- remains Cairo, a city that never fails to make a strong impression ,you will be picked up to catch your early morning flight to cairo , a van with a licensed driver and Egyptologist tour guide will take you to tour around the Egyptian museum where is the great Tutankhamun collection & all the antiques of pharaohnic Egypt , then we continue driving to the pyramids , the sphinx , we can stop for lunch as a free hour , then we continue touring around Cairo old market &bazaars , then we will be dropped by Cairo airport to catch the flight back to luxor.
This is a private tour allowing you to determine the amount of time spent at each of the sites during the tour,Also enjoy privileged, personalized attention from your expert Egyptologist guide on this special private tour.

 

Luxor oriental evening show Dinner & dance ,get your own oriental evening

Luxor oriental evening show Dinner & dance ,get your own oriental evening

A taste of modern Egyptian entertainment . we will provide you with your very own galabiya (yours to keep)as we set sail down the nile on a felucca to the feast tent here you will indulge on sumptuous Egyptian buffet with unlimited local wine & beer. entertainment will normally include a belly dancer , camels & snake charmer , and the skirt dance (the dervish dance), this show is also very interesting for the kids so make sure they get this fun , the show end early around 9pm.You will be picked up every sunday at 3. 30pm in a/c van to the resort where the show is performed you will get dressed in galabia costume , to start your great evening , you will go on a fellucca ride , then you will start your feast , a buffet dinner , with unlimited local wine &beer as well as all the soft drinks , you will enjoy the folkloric oriental belly dance , the skirt dance (the dervish dance), &the snake charmer , after you will be taken back to your place

 

Egypt|Cairo|Tour to The Pyramids of Giza|Sphinx

Egypt|Cairo|Tour to The Pyramids of Giza|Sphinx

 ITINERARY
How did the Pharaohs build the massive pyramids?
That's certainly the first question that comes to your mind every time you see the Pyramids. You really wish you could have " a time machine " to travel back in time and find out by yourself.
To fully appreciate the art of building pyramids in Pharaonic Egypt, you have to go back to the third millennium to discover how they built them at a time they didn't even have the wheel or the pulley.
Take a very interesting tour to the Pyramids of Giza and The sphinx to see how they did that. Learn how they made a few "mistakes" before they raised the amazing Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, a feet of engineering by all means. It's not a coincidence some people consider it one the of the best structures ever made by man in all ages.
To build this pyramid you have to be a first-class mason, engineer, architect, mathematician, astronomer and surveyor. The ancient Egyptians just mastered all these sciences three thousand years before Christ was born.
The Great Pyramid of Giza (also called the Pyramid of Khufu and the Pyramid of Cheops) is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza Necropolis bordering what is now El Giza, Egypt It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact Egyptologists believe that the pyramid was built as a tomb for fouthe dynaste Egyptian Pharaoh khofo (Cheops in Greek) and constructed over a 14 to 20-year period concluding around 2560 BC Pick up at your hotel in Cairo to discover first the Pyramids of Cheops, Chephren and Mykerinus Then proceed to visit the Great Sphinx, the head of a pharaoh with a lion's body and the Valley Temple.

Optional :

- Have a camel/carriage ride by the pyramids and across the Sahara .
- Have lunch in a local restaurant (optional).
if you want to spend the evening outside the hotel, you can book sound & light show or have a dinner cruise which is a unique experience in a 5* boat with an interesting program including oriental egyptian dancing ,folkloric show&open buffet with a delicious egyptian and international food

Responsible Tourism:

By employing one guide for every two travelers (compared to one guide for 10-12 people at other companies), Egypt Traveluxe Tours has been committed, from inception, to investing in the local people and economy. Today, Egypt Traveluxe Tours has taken this commitment to supporting education for disadvantaged children in the Egyptian community.
Read this intersting article about the great pyramids of giza click here :
THE GREAT PYRAMID: Built to Represent the Human Body

Day Trip to Luxor , Egypt from Marsa Alam

Day Trip to Luxor , Egypt from Marsa Alam

ITINERARY

pick up from your hotel in Marsa Alam and take you to Luxor by a private air-conditioned deluxe vehicle to visit the famous Karnak temple the largest place of worship ever built. Its ancient name Ipet-isut means “the most sacred of places.” The temple, or, more correctly, the complex of temples, was built over more than two thousand years by generation after generation of pharaohs. Within the complex, the great “Hypostyle Hall” is an incredible forest of giant pillars. Then you will have Lunch in a local restaurant and then you will enjoy an excursion to The West Bank of The Nile River to visit the two colossal statues of Amenhotep III (Colossi of Memnon), and then visit the Valley of the Kings, where the magnificent tombs discovered, those tombs were carved deep into the desert rock, richly decorated and filled with treasures for the afterlife of the pharaohs, you will visit 3 tombs. Continue the tour to visit the Hatshepsut temple at El Deir El Bahary, this impressive temple dedicated to the Queen Hatshepsut the only female pharaoh rises out of the desert plain in a series of terraces and merges with the sheer limestone cliffs that surround it finally drive back to your hotel in Marsa Alam.

About Deir el Medina ,Valley of the Workers

The workers stayed at the tombs for 10 days and then returned to their families here in the village.The village of the workers housed the masons, artists, and sculptors who worked on the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. The men working on the tombs were not slaves -- they were government workers who were paid well and provided with supplies and food.They were not allowed to have contact with the people on the east bank -- and were in fact prevented from leaving the village here because they knew the secrets of the tombs. , Their families lived here in the village with them. These were often hereditary positions, so generation after generation of workers lived here.
The tiny houses often had stairs to the roof, although it is hard to imagine what this village looked like, Narrow streets -- some of them only 2-3 feet wide -- wind through the maze like collection of houses.
Just up the hill from the small village is a hillside where the workers built their own tombs, These were usually small, but they were beautifully decorated. The artists often did their best work in their own tombs. A little to the north of the village is a small temple, complete with an enclosure wall,The most famose The Sendjem tomb ,the Inherkhau and Pashadoa .

 Get your private tour to Deir Elmadina with Egyptraveluxe Expert guide for 20$

Ramesseum--the Mortuary Temple of Ramses II

Were it still standing, the Ozymandias colossus of Ramses (celebrated by poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in his sonnet "Ozymandias") would tower 20 meters above the ground, rivaling the Colossi of Memnon and the statues of Ramses carved into the mountain at Abu Simbel.

 The name "Ramesseum" – or at least its French form, Rhamesséion – was coined by Jean-François Champollion, who visited the ruins of the site in 1829 and first identified the hieroglyphs making up Ramses' names and titles on the walls.

 The design of Ramses's mortuary temple follows the standard designs of New Kingdom temple architecture. The main building, dedicated to the funerary cult, comprised two stone pylons (gateways, some 60 m wide), one after the other, each leading into a courtyard. Beyond the second courtyard, at the center of the complex, was a covered 48-column hypostyle hall, surrounding the inner sanctuary.

 As is customary, the pylons and outer walls were decorated with reliefs commemorating the pharaoh's military victories and leaving due record of his dedication to, and kinship with, the gods. In Ramses' case, much importance is placed on the Battle of Kadesh (ca. 1285 BC). 

Especially intriguing is one block atop the first pylon, which records his pillaging, in the eighth year of his reign, a city called "Shalem," which may or may not have been Jerusalem.
Adjacent to the north of the hypostyle hall was a smaller temple; this was dedicated to Ramses's mother, Tuya, and his beloved chief wife, Nefertari.
To the south of the first courtyard stood the temple palace. The entire complex was surrounded by various storerooms, granaries, workshops, and other ancillary buildings, some built as late as Roman times.
A cache of papyri and ostraca dating back to the third intermediate period (11th to 8th centuries BC) indicates that the temple was also the site of an important scribal school. And neither was this a virgin plot when Ramses had the first stone put in place: beneath the hypostyle hall, modern archaeologists have found a shaft tomb from the Middle Kingdom, yielding a rich hoard of religious and funerary artifacts.

Ramses II was a 19th dynasty pharaoh of Egypt. He ruled for 67 years during the 13th century BC, the apogee of Ancient Egypt's power and glory.
This extraordinarily long reign, the wealth available in the state coffers, and, undeniably, the pharaoh's personal vanity meant that Ramses, of all the ancient rulers, left what is perhaps the most indelible mark on the country. His legacy can be seen most clearly in the archaeological record – in the many buildings that Ramses modified, usurped, or constructed from the ground up.
Most splendid of these, in accordance with New Kingdom Royal burial practices, was his memorial temple, the Ramesseum – a place of worship dedicated to pharaoh, god on earth, where his memory would have been kept alive after his passing from this world. Surviving records indicate that work on the project began shortly after the start of his reign and continued for 20 years.
Unlike the massive stone temples that Ramses ordered carved from the face of the Nubian mountains at Abu Simbel, the inexorable passage of three millennia was not kind to his "temple of a million years" at Thebes. This was mostly due to its location on the very edge of the Nile floodplain, with the annual inundation gradually undermining the foundations of this temple, and its neighbours. Neglect and the arrival of new faiths also took their toll: for example, in the early years of the Common Era, the temple was put into service as a Christian church.

This is all standard fare for a temple of its kind built at the time it was. Leaving aside the escalation of scale – whereby each successive New Kingdom pharaoh strove to outdo his predecessors in volume and scope – the Ramesseum is largely cast in the same mould as Ramses III's Medinet Habu or the ruined temple of Amenhotep III that stood behind the "Colossi of Memnon" a kilometre or so away. Instead, the significance that the Ramesseum enjoys today owes more to the time and manner of its rediscovery by Europeans.

Visit The Ramasseum with Egyptraveluxe Expert guide for 30$