Once in Cairo you can arrange to hire a car and a guide for any tours you may wish to take. You can also contact our friend and guide by email prior to your trip. The guides at Cairo are a little "hit and miss" so I would recommend Aladin. Email [email protected]

I highly recommend Ahmed Seddik for your tours. We hired him last year. It was terrific. He has a splendid command of English. He even has a Facebook fan page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cairo-...st/50971729618

John

Our family has always traveled independently overseas as I work for the airlines and go overseas everyweek for work. However, I found when trying to put together a trip to Egypt and Jordan last year that it was almost impossible to obtain plane and train tickets within Egypt without an Egyptian travel agent. Most of the tickets(air) from Aswan to Abu Simbel seem to be prebooked through travel agents months before so our family could not book them online or by ourselves.
If you don't want to do the full tour thing I would highly recommend using Debbie from Casual Cairo tours who is on this board and originally from the US. She was most helpful in providing help on various things. She suggested using the Hotel Longchamps in Cairo and it was one of our favorite hotels that we have ever stayed at-inexpensive and providing a great oasis in the chaos of Cairo.Debbie also has various daytrips to Alexandria,Coptic Cairo,regular Cairo,etc. that you can work out with her.
As much as everyone wants to be independent in Egypt, there are times it is good to have something prebooked before leaving .Good luck!

While it has been a few years since I have been to Egypt, 4 to be precise I am currently planning a return trip this summer.

My husband and I spent 3 weeks traveling in the country on our own. The only place we did not like was Alexandria, which we went to on our own for 2 nights by the local train.

We did have some confusion over getting train tickets on our own for the overnight to Luxor with a sleeping compartment for our Nile cruise. The hotel even sent someone to get the tickets and then the young man came back with no luck. They sent us ourselves and advised us that we should be prepared to pay a tip to get our compartment, which we were. When the booth opened up the agent sold us the tickets at cost and away we went, No Problem.

We hired a cab driver to take us to Giza for the day and he was great and very helpful. We traveled all over Cairo using public transportation, the subway system is great, and people were very helpful and polite. We were there during part of Ramadan and the Feast of Eid.

We did book our Nile cruise before leaving the US even though everyone said you could book when you got there,and that in fact is true. There are hundreds of boats along the Nile in Luxor and very few are full. It is a great experience and one not to miss.

So we used the subways, trains, planes and cabs without incident. While Cairo is a big city if you use the subway you can easily get around and walking around the city is half the fun.

When you have your bank do a wire tranfer of money to a bank in Egypt, shouldn't the Egyptian bank receive the money almost instantly? My bank did this for me on 4/19 for a private Egyptian tour payment. Today is 4/23 and the tour said that they haven't receive confirmation yet about the money. Should I be concern or just give it a few more days? Thanks.

Alex... to do an international bank transfer can take a couple of days.... this is what I was advised by my bank and actually happened when I sent my money to Lady Egypt from Australia.

Ok, thanks MissGreen. I was a little bit concern since I'm supposed to be in Egypt in about 2 weeks.

If you want to do the Islamic parts of Cairo on your own, here are a couple of walks that were put together by an English lady who was living in Cairo.

http://www.tripadvisor.ca/Travel-g29...o.Walk.1..html

http://www.tripadvisor.ca/Travel-g29...o.Walk.2..html

Axel2DP and those who have solo toured Egypt-- cannot wait to join you!

Tentatively, I plan to visit the following UNESCO sites: (A) Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae; (B) Memphis and its Necropolis – the Pyramid Fields from Giza to Dahshur; (C) Historic Cairo.

I want to see as many different sites as possible. If you have further recommendations, please let me know.

If you have traveled to those places by yourself (minus Cairo), please let me know how you got there if one uses Cairo as the main departure site.

Axel2DP: which tour did you eventually join? Be sure to share your experience when you return!

Hi Hobbit,

I will be doing it with Lady Egypt. There's a schedule but it should be very flexible since I'm not doing a group tour, so I'm very happy with that. I'm flying there in about two weeks. When are you heading off?



Anyone has advice on how to have enough small bills ready for that all important bahkeesh? I can stop at the ATM upon my airport arrival, but I doubt it will spit out small bills for me. Can I get changes at the airport? How do you maintain enough small bills for the entire duration of the trip? Are ATMs handy in Luxor and Answan? Thanks.

Are you doing the "Pharaohs Footsteps Tour?" I might do that tour if I decide to do a tour group, which ideally I would like to avoid.

My trip will take place next summer. I plan to go to Jordan (Petra), Egypt, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Morocco. Though I wonder if I should stop by Greece since I would have experienced most ancient columns by that time.

As for your questions, why don't you email Lady Egypt those questions? Maybe your Egyptian hotels can answer them too.

Enjoy Egypt as a solo traveler. Hope all goes well for you.

Forgot to add: I plan to stop by Turkey next summer too.

Has anyone visited Abydos on a day trip from Luxor? I wasn't initially planning on doing it, but since I'll have almost two whole free days in Luxor I think I might try to squeeze in Abydos. My only concern is that the trip there and back will take up the entire day, from 8:00am until 5-6 pm before I get back to Luxor. Does that seems like how long the trip to Abydos will take? I think I'd like to have my evening free in case I want to visit Karnak or Luxor temple in the early evening.


Regarding having enough small bills ready for my trip duration, should I (a) have a bunch of U.S. $1.00 bill before I arrive in Cairo so that I can use them just in case I don't have any LE available ? (b) Will I be able to get small LE bills at the airport exchange and/or at the hotel bank if there is one? I just don't want to not have any bahksheesh readily available, especially for the drivers and guides that I'll be using. Thanks.

If you are going to need to spend the whole day out on a day trip, do Abydos and Dendara on the same day. They are in the same direction and doable in one day.

Not a bad idea to have clean, new $1 USD bills with you incase you don't have any EGP on you, but as soon as you can get EGP, get it and use it. 1LE coins are now available from the banks in rolls. They seem to be more available than the notes ever were. Tip with those when you have them.

Coins in the roll should be available at one of the banks - airport or hotel, but if not, keep looking for them. They are around now.

Drivers and guides should get more like $5 minimum and they will gladly accept USD...but it should not have any writing on it or be torn. Try to keep those bills in the USA if you can.