Where to go in Egypt: neighborhood breakdowns, Egyptian National Railways transit links, and daily budgets in EGP (E£).
Spanning both banks of the Nile alongside the Giza Plateau, Africa's largest city pairs the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Khufu and the monumental new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) with Fatimid minarets along Al-Muizz Street and Nile-view terraces in Zamalek.
The last surviving Wonder of the Ancient World rises above the western desert escarpment at Giza—where the Great Pyramid of Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure, and the Great Sphinx connect southward along the ancient royal necropolis belt to Djoser's Step Pyramid at Saqqara and the Bent & Red Pyramids of Dahshur.
Occupying the site of ancient New Kingdom Thebes, Luxor is the world's greatest open-air museum: the East Bank rises with the 134 giant papyrus columns of Karnak and floodlit Luxor Temple, while across the Nile the West Bank conceals 63 royal rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
At the First Cataract of the Nile, granite boulders split the cobalt river around palm-shaded Elephantine Island as white-sailed feluccas glide past the Botanical Gardens—forming the southern anchor for 3-to-4-night Luxor↔Aswan Nile cruises and the colossal rock temples of Abu Simbel.
Connected to Luxor by a 4-hour paved desert highway (making it the ultimate post-Nile-cruise relaxation pairing), the Red Sea Riviera offers kaleidoscopic coral gardens around Giftun Island, kitesurfing lagoons in El Gouna, and wild dolphins and sea turtles in Marsa Alam.
Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE and reached in just 2 hours 20 minutes from Cairo on the new Spanish-built ENR Talgo high-speed train, Alexandria sweeps along a 15 km Mediterranean Corniche from the 15th-century Citadel of Qaitbay to the futuristic disc of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
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