History and Mystery Make Cairo Worth the Trip

Jet-lagged and bouncing through the city streets in a jitney just before midnight, I pass densely packed rows of two-story shops, mile after mile of them.

Then, as if in a dream, an immense peak suddenly looms in semidarkness above the rooftops: The Great Pyramid.

Cairo, Egypt's capital and largest city (population 20 million), provides a bounty of unforgettable sights. Antiquity jostles with improvised, often-ramshackle modernity in this metropolis, which straddles the Nile River, sprawls across the desert and pushes up to the edges of the delta, where palms sway in hot Sahara winds and branches of the river cut a watery web in the landscape.

My recent visit was my first, and to be candid, I hesitated to go. Tourists have been attacked in other parts of Egypt, and with America's standing abysmally low in much of the Middle East, I wondered how I would be received.

Pyramids

Very well, as it turned out. Ordinary Egyptians are hospitable and down to earth. Tight security measures are in evidence. Specially uniformed Tourism Antiquities Police patrol popular attractions such as the Giza pyramids, and visitors are triple-screened at the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo. Even major hotels have lobby X-ray machines and guards.

For all that, curiosity compelled a visit. Age-old myths, Biblical stories, movies and books ensure Egypt is an exotic, world-famous destination. It does not disappoint.

Cairo has two must-sees in the greater metropolitan area -- the pyramids with their enigmatic companion, the Sphinx, and the Egyptian Museum.

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