Cairo

Understand

Cairo is on the Nile, and has ancient origins in the vicinity of the Pharaonic city of Memphis. The city started to take its present form in 641 CE, when the Arab general Amr Ibn Al-Ase conquered Egypt for Islam and founded a new capital called Misr Al-Fustat, "the City of the Tents". The legend is that Al-Ase, on the day he was leaving to conquer Alexandria, found two doves nesting in his tent. Not wanting to disturb them, he left the tent. Upon returning victorious, he called his soldiers to pitch their tents around his, and this became the site of the new city in what is now Old Cairo. The name may have been a pun – Misr/Masr is the Arabic word for city, but it is also the Arabic name of the entire country of Egypt. The Tunisian Fatimid dynasty captured the city in 969 CE and founded a new city, Al-Qahira ("The Victorious") just north of Al-Fustat. Al-Qahira gave the city its English name, Cairo, but the locals still call it MàSr (مصر), which is also the Arabic name of the entire country of Egypt (similar to Mexico City in Mexico).

Get around

You will find that it's useful to have several maps handy if you are looking to get around Cairo on your own. Spellings of street and place names can vary from map to map and from map to actual location, and not every street will appear on every map.

See

thumb|250px|The [[Cairo/Giza|Great Pyramids of Giza]] thumbnail|Mosque Amr ibn Al-As Entrance in the UNESCO-listed Old Cairo Cairo is a vast metropolitan cityscape. It includes an array of modern skyscrapers, mosques, bazaars and ruins of associated ancient monuments outside the city.

Cairo has an overwhelming array of attractions, listed under their individual districts along with transport and other practicalities. Some highlights:

Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx. The oldest and only surviving monuments of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it is the country's most famous tourist attraction. See it now before the hordes return. Citadel and Mosque of Mohamed Ali Pasha, in Islamic Cairo. A grand castle built by Salah Al-Din. Also parts of the water pipes (Majra Al-Oyouon) are still there, these pipes used to carry the water from the Nile River to the citadel. Mohamed Ali is considered to be the founder of modern Egypt, the ancestor of the last King of Egypt, King Farouk. Al-Azhar Mosque. One of the pillars of Islamic thought and home to the world's oldest university. The Coptic Quarter, in Coptic Cairo, notably the museum and the "Hanging Church" (Church of the Virgin Mary) Cairo Tower (185 m./610 ft.) on Gezira Island offers a 360-degree view of Cairo, along with the Giza Pyramids off in the distance to the west.

Buy

thumb|250px|Midan Talaat Harb

ATMs are found in various places throughout downtown. A more secure option are the ATMs in the five star hotels. There also are numerous places that handle currency exchange, or you can try any major bank such as HSBC or Commercial International Bank.

Foreign currencies can also be exchanged for Egyptian pound in all the Egyptian banks like Banque Misr, National Bank of Egypt, Banque de Caire, Arab African Bank, the United Bank, or the large branches of Bureau de Change.

Many merchants will try to scam you out of as much as they possibly can. A particularly common trick are the papyrus museums. They come in many different flavours, but they often call themselves galleries, museums or workshops. You will be given a brief talk or demonstration on how papyrus is made, and warned against cheaper shops that make their papyrus from banana leaf (though no matter where you go, no one has a sample to show you, questioning the legitimacy of this "warning"). The prices will be in the hundreds, and you will be offered what appears to be an excellent discount. If you look around, however, you will see most of what they offer is worth very little. Tour guides, taxi drivers and hotel staff are all in on this, and will often get a 50% commission if they lead an unwitting tourist into this trap. The Khan El-Khalili bazaar is a giant souq in Islamic Cairo. The merchants here are ravenous and skilled, so don't fall for the hard sell and be prepared to haggle. Th…

Eat

Cairo has an enormous number of restaurants, catering to most needs. Ironically though, one may want to avoid any restaurants listed in popular guidebooks. Egyptian restaurants have a habit of after being listed, cooking up a special English menu with vastly inflated prices. That said, cheap food can be found everywhere in street restaurants and snack stalls. The top notch restaurants are often, but not always, found in hotels and Nile boats. The borders between restaurants and cafes are not crystal-clear in the Egyptian capital. In many places it is perfectly acceptable to just have a drink or sheesha. Medium and high-range outlets might have a minimum charge. Cheaper restaurants will normally not serve alcohol as well as some more expensive outlets.

In general, downtown is good for budget eating, while for higher quality eating you should head to Zamalek, Mohandiseen or any of the other more affluent parts of town.

Drink

thumb|300px|Meat market in central Cairo

Cairo has a wide range of drinking options from the very traditional to fashionable and modern. At the other end of the scale, almost any street in Cairo has a traditional coffee house, ´ahwa, a traditionally male institution of social life tracing many hundreds of years back in history. Besides that you'll find everything from fruit stalls to patisseriés and bakeries and modern cafés whipping up all varieties of modern European coffee. In addition to the traditional Turkish coffee and shai tea, virtually everywhere you'll find drinks like hibiscus tea kerkedeeh, served warm or cold depending on season, sahleb, a milk-based drink usually served in winter, fakhfakhenna (a kind of fruit salad), sugarcane juice, mango and tamarind juice, Tamr hindi.

Sleep

Cairo has a tremendous range of accommodation, from low-rent budget hotels downtown to five-star palaces along the Nile. See individual district articles for hotel listings.

You can also stay in an accommodation in Giza directly at an entrance to the pyramid area. Many of these accommodations have a pyramid view.

Stay safe

Scams against tourists are almost a national sport, though they're usually obvious. A good rule of thumb is that if someone approaches you on the street, they're trying to scam you. Don't talk to them. Common scams are: The place you're going to is closed, why don't you take my tour? (Taxi drivers may use this. You can avoid this by using Uber or Careem.) You need help crossing the street? Come, let me help you! Let me show you my shop, it's just on this corner. No this corner, no this corner, etc. Let me show you how to get to the mosque - no baksheesh, just LE100 to get in and go up to the roof. (Your new friend then tips the mosque guardian LE20 and pockets the rest.)

During politically-calm times, you can walk around the main streets anytime you feel like roaming. It is fairly safe and you will always find lots of people around smiling and offering to help. Women alone can expect to be the target of an excessive amount of catcalling, but it rarely goes beyond that. Around the more touristy locations there is an abundance of 'helpful' people, but be careful who you go with and under no circumstance let anyone push or guide you anywhere that you do not want to go! If you get lost look for the security and police officers. Many speak some English, and most know their local area very well as well as the tourist spots.

Crossing streets is another major challenge in Cairo. Traffic lights, which only exist in a few locations, are routinely disregarded. In downtown Cairo, polic…

Go next

The Japanese Gardens in Helwan are a 20-min drive from Downtown or by Metro. They're a good spot for an afternoon picnic away from the city. Alexandria can be done as a day-trip, though it deserves longer. Top sights are the new library, the national museum, and Qaitbey fortress; then enjoy a fish dinner on the Corniche and maybe a drink. The train takes about 2½ hours, see section on "Get in by train" above for times and fares. Ain al-Sukhna is the closest Red Sea resort to Cairo and easily reached on a day trip. This place is growing rapidly to become the getaway for Cairo's moneyed elite. To get here, hire a taxi for the day. Fayoum is another popular place for Egyptians to picnic. While the city offers little in itself, the Qaroon lake and Wadi Al-Rayyan both offer scenic spots for relaxing and the area also contains some of the first pyramids in history. Get there by bus and then get a taxi to drive you around for the day. It's possible to stay overnight at the scenic Tunis village. Siwa and Bahariyya are oases in the desert, far from the city hubbub. The other major centres in Egypt, needing several days to visit, are Luxor and Aswan for antiquities, and the Red Sea resorts such as Hurghada and Sharm el-Sheikh.