Cairo, Mother of the World, Start Point for your Egypt Tour

Cairo - the Jewel of the Orient - the City of the Thousand Minarets - the Melting Pot of Ancient and Modern Civilizations - The Mother of the World - The City of Victory - and starting point for your Egypt tour. Visitors sometimes find it a bewildering mixture of old and new. Businessmen in suits and locals in traditional robes can be seen in the same footpath coffee shops - minarets and domes share the skyline with high-rise office buildings and hotel towers - and traditional music mixes Egyptian pop and the continuous sound of car horns.

However you describe Cairo, it is a dynamic and lively city combining a cosmopolitan lifestyle with a rich cultural heritage. The people are proud of their ancient city that they call al-Qahira, and Cairo has much to offer the interested tourist by way of ancient Pharaonic sites, Islamic monuments and Coptic churches. It is easy to feel the history in Cairo, where early seeds of civilization were sown surrounded by the harsh desert. Here there were many firsts - from the first multinational state to the first writing using hieroglyphics.

It is a city where the past meets the present - it extends along the banks of the River Nile to the delta in the south where the river divides into two waterways - Rosetta and Damietta. On the east side of the river stands evidence of 2,000 years of Islamic, Christian and Jewish culture, still evident today. To the west of the river lies the ancient city of Giza which was known as Memphis when it was the capital of the Old Kingdom. This is where you can see the Pyramids, the only remaining one of the seven wonders of the world.

Cairo isn't a gentle city. As with most mega cities the air is not as clean as it could be - the place is chaotic, noisy, polluted, totally unpredictable and seething with people - the sheer intensity of the city will either fascinate or frighten you.

Home to more than 16 million Egyptians, Arabs, Africans and others, the 'Mother of the World' is an amazing place. With its patchwork of ancient and medieval and modern, Cairo can be a bit hard to get a grip of - often things take longer than you would have thought, and nothing works quite perfectly. Patience is essential - but if you set realistic goals, take it easy and drink plenty of water, you'll have a wonderful time.