Tours

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I booked day tours through the hotel's travel office each day to various points in Cairo to include the Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx, Islamic Cairo, the Citadel, and Old Cairo to include Coptic Cairo as well as other day tours to Memphis and Saqqara. Each tour that I took I cost approximately $32.00 in cash; no credit cards. The tour guides were extremely knowledgeable about their subject matter (tour guides are required to possess a history degree), organized, and last but not least, very pleasant. My tour mates were also great and I made some interesting new friends from all over the world.

The Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx are very different on the day and evening tours, so I recommend going to both tours as you will get a different perspective of them on each tour. On the day tour, you view the monuments close-up, and are able to ride camels or horses in the deserty bits surrounding them. Unfortunately, the site is not really out in the desert as you really imagine it would be. I guess that it was at one time, but due to urban Cairo sprawl, you now walk right out of the local town and into a pyramid; sort of like being in a movie set. But, it’s still a lot of fun and very interesting. Incidentally, when that sun comes up, it can be really “hot”, so remember to bring a hat.

By contrast, on an evening tour, you are part of an audience watching a show. The evening tour is the Sound & Light Show at the Giza Pyramids & Sphinx and occurs at sundown every day except Thursday and Sunday. In a way, it’s rather cheesy, due to the overly dramatic commentary, which supposedly is narrated by the Sphinx and tells the history of Egypt, and its generally contrived setting, but the cameo of the Pyramids and the Sphinx illuminated against an evening backdrop is actually quite romantic and you can certainly learn a few facts about the history of Egypt while you’re at it. I will say that its musical score emphasizing drum rolls certainly gave me a hankering to see the 1960s film classic, “Cleopatra” starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton again.

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