Arrived in Cairo around 4.45PM. There isn't really any place to to hire a pre-paid taxi from the airport to the city, the tourist information place was also closed for some reason. I took some money out from the ATM in the airport and headed out and had first session of haggling in Egypt witht the taxi driver. After bringing down the price about 50% we started making our way to Cairo. The taxi looked like it could fall apart any minute, same with the cab driver, who kept coughing all the way but didn't stop smoking over the 25 min cab ride to the town. On the way noticed there were police, army guys standing every 10 meter, it was because The President was coming home from somewhere.

I checked into Hotel Berlin which is in a rather dark building and rooms are not that great but paid 65 LE per night ($13), it was close to lot of things in downtown Cairo. That night went for a walk around couple of roundabouts, I was surprised to see so many people still shopping at 10-10.30PM at night. The next surprising thing was I could see very few women wearing the black burkha, although most women did have hijab (head scarf). I was rather surprised by number of couples walking/shopping with hand in hand you would think you are in Europe or San Fran, Also the kind of women's clothing displayed in the showcases was surprise to me as well. They even had victorias secret type shop! None of this I expected in "Egypt".

Next day got up early and visited the Cairo museum for almost one full day. While the museum is nice, for the amount of money they charge and the fact that it has been open for 40 years, I was surprised to see that only small percentage of artifacts have notes next to them. Certainly Egyptian govt can do something about it. I am sure if they put out an appeal to travellers to spend few days to type up things lot of people would help. But may be its a ploy to help local guides earn some business? So if you do visit Cairo museum, grab Egypt LP it has nice explanation for lot of rooms. The most intresting exhibit for me was intresting models of boats and people rowing the boats. It looks like during the Pheroh's time there must have been booming business of stuff for people making model houses, boats etc. However when travelling in Egypt make sure you do not take photos of any public building, I was just taking photo of one of the roundabout and a tourist police appeared and warned me not to take any more photos. But he did not make big deal about it.

The next day visited Islamic Cairo and Coptic museum and just walked around Cairo. Also booked train ticket from Cairo to Luxor. Used the subway in Cairo, it was nice, clean and efficient, beats haggling with taxi drivers!

Next day I hired a taxi and driver from the hotel Beriln who took me to Saqqara, Pyramids of Dahshur and Giza. At Saqqara visited the massive step pyramid, arrived early enough that there were not a lot of people. The step pyramid was built around 2650 BC for Zoser.

While in Saqqara visited the Pyramid of Teti and Pyramid of Pepi II. You can actually go inside the Pyramid of Teti.

The next stop was Dashur where I visited the Red Pyramid, you can actually go inside this Pyramid, the actual burial chamber is 60+ meter down. This pyramid has two chambers inside the most amazing thing is the roof of both those chambers. They are about 12 meter high inside, I had no idea how those guys built it about 4000 years ago.

The good part of visiting Red Pyramid was, there was absolutely nobody there! Otherwise most places in Egypt are full of package tourist buses.

Next to the Red Pyramid there is something called Bent pyramid. The correct angle for Pyramids is supposed to be 43 degrees but when they started building the bent pyramid they started building it at 54 degrees and when it became unstable they went to 43 degrees, thats why the shape.
I guess Pyramid version 0.9 which really did not work, so king had another one built. The concept of fixing things in next release is as old as 4000 years, I guess ;)

The next place I visited was famous pyramids of Giza. This place was full of package tourists and people trying to sell anything and everything to you. So you have to keep repeating La Shukran (No Thank You) many time. However for me personally the touts harrassed me much much less because either I look Arabic/Indian and they prefer to market their stuff to European travellers. The Spinx was great also you can museum that contains old boat.

Giza pyramids were nice but I really liked the red Pyramid the most. Returned to Cairo around 6.00PM. After about couple of hours of nap headed out in search of bar for couple of beers. If you want to good view of Cairo city, head out the the Hilton Nile, they have nice bar on the roof from where you can get good view of the city. However minimum bar tab is 35 L.E. which was not a problem. Met a couple in 40s from France at the bar both collecting the unemployment benefit of french govt and travelling through Egypt, Syria etc. About five years ago they had travelled through India for one year while collecting unemployment benefits, wish I had French passport!

Next day I was going to take the overnight train to Luxor, so I decided to visit Suez. The bus ride to Suez takes about 2.5 hrs. I was impressed by how clean (compared to India) and wide the roads were, sinc I took the early morning bus could see lot of traffic coming into Cairo city, again was surprised by number of women drivers. May be for some reason I had image of Egypt as staunch Islamic country where women are not free etc. Anyway after getting off at Suez bus station hired a taxi for 20 L.E. for return trip to and from the port. The taxi driver made clear that I could not take photos of the actual Suez canal because then both he and me would land in jail. There are lot of oil refinaries around Port Tawfiq, I could only see the entrance to the Suez Canal, could not actually see any boats cross the canal spent about 30 min then took return bus Cairo. Not a very exciting trip but wanted to see the great Suez Canal...