Cairo (Arabic: Al-Qāhirah), which means "The Vanquisher" or "The Triumphant", is the capital and largest city of Egypt. It is the Arab World and Africa's most populous city. While Al-Qahirah is the official name of the city, in Egyptian Arabic it commonly shares the dialect's name for the country, transliteration: Masr. Inhabitants of Cairo are called Masraweya rather than Masri within Egypt.
Cairo was founded by the Fatimid caliphs as a royal enclosure, and replaced Fustat as the seat of the government. It later came under the Mamluks, ruled by the Ottomans 1517 to 1798, briefly occupied by Napoleon. Muhammad Ali of Egypt made Cairo the capital of his independent empire from 1805 to 1882, after which the British took control of it until Egypt attained independence in 1922.
Cairo has a population of about 6.8 million people according to the 2006 population census. The number of inhabitants was about a million higher at the time of the census, but this was adjusted downwards on the 17th of April 2008 when the new governorate of Helwan was created from parts of a.o. Cairo governorate. Cairo's metropolitan area has a population of about 17.285 million people.] Cairo is the sixteenth most populous metropolitan area in the world. It is also the most populous metropolitan area in Africa.
Today, Greater Cairo encompasses various historic towns and modern districts into one of the most populous cities in the world. A journey through Cairo is a virtual time travel: from the Pyramids, Saladin's Citadel, the Virgin Mary's Tree, the Sphinx, and Heliopolis, to Al-Azhar, the Mosque of Amr ibn al-A'as, Saqqara, the Hanging Church, and the Cairo Tower. It is the Capital of Egypt, and indeed its history is intertwined with that of the country. Today, Cairo's official name is Al-Qahira (Cairo), although the name informally used by most Egyptians is "Masr" (Egyptian Arabic name for Egypt), from the original name of Egypt's first Arab capital Fustat, Misr al-Fustat, "City of the Tents."
Alexandria, with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the largest seaport that serves about 80% of all of Egypt's imports and exports. Alexandria is also a very important tourist resort.
Alexandria extends about 32 km (20 miles) along the coast of the Mediterranean sea in north-central Egypt. It is home to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (the new Library of Alexandria), and is an important industrial centre because of its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez. Alexandria was also an important trading post between Europe and Asia, because it profited from the easy overland connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea.
In ancient times, Alexandria was one of the most famous cities in the world. It was founded around a small pharaonic town c. 331 BC by Greek Macedonian king Alexander the Great. It remained Egypt's capital for nearly a thousand years, until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641 AD when a new capital was founded at Fustat, later absorbed into Cairo.
Alexandria was known for the Lighthouse of Alexandria (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), the Library of Alexandria (the largest library in the ancient world) and the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa (one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages). Ongoing maritime archaeology in the harbour of Alexandria, which began in 1994, is revealing details of Alexandria both before the arrival of Alexander, when a city named Rhakotis existed there, and during the Ptolemaic dynasty.
Luxor ,as the site of the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, is a town in Upper (southern) Egypt and it is famous for its monuments which are all over the two banks of the Nile, the eastern and western, this is why it is considered as the "world's greatest open air museum".
On the east side there are the temple complexes of Karnak and Luxor.
On the west side there are the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, the Valley of the Nobles, and the Valley of the artisans (in Deir elmadina), there are also the mortuary temples of Queen Hatshepsut (Aldeir Albahary Temple , King Ramesses the 2nd (The Ramesseum), King Ramesses the 3rd (Habu Temple), and King Amonhotep the 3rd (Colossi of Memnon).
Thousands of international tourists arrive each year to visit these monuments, and their presence represents a large part of the economic basis for the modern city. As a result, Luxor represents an excellent base for touring Upper Egypt, and is a popular holiday destination, both in its own right and as a starting or finishing point for Nile cruises.
The population of Luxor is more than 400 thousand and its area is about 416 km2.
In Luxor you can have a wonderful hot air balloon ride over the west side's monuments ,houses and fileds. You can also visit the interseting Luxor Museum .
You can watch the Sound & Light show at Karnak and you can visit Luxor Temple in the evening.
From Luxor you can visit the two impressive temples of dendera and Abydos.
Aswan is a city in the south of Egypt, the capital of the Aswan Governorate. It stands on the east bank of the Nile at the first cataract and is a busy market and tourist center. It contains the island of Elephantine.
Aswan is one of the driest inhabited places in the world; as of early 2001, the last rain there was six years earlier. As of 31 March 2008, the last rainfall was a thunderstorm on May 13, 2006. In Nubian settlements, they generally do not bother to roof all of the rooms in their houses.
Abu Simbel is an archaeological site comprising two massive rock temples in southern Egypt on the western bank of Lake Nasser about 290 km southwest of Aswan. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the "Nubian Monuments", which run from Abu Simbel downriver to Philae (near Aswan).
The twin temples were originally carved out of the mountainside during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II in the 13th century BC, as a lasting monument to himself and his queen Nefertari, to commemorate his alleged victory at the Battle of Kadesh, and to intimidate his Nubian neighbors. However, the complex was relocated in its entirety in the 1960s, on an artificial hill made from a domed structure, high above the Aswan dam reservoir.
The relocation of the temples was necessary to avoid their being submerged during the creation of Lake Nasser, the massive artificial water reservoir formed after the building of the Aswan dam on the Nile River. Abu Simbel remains one of Egypt's top tourist attractions.
The Red Sea is a salt water inlet of the Indian Ocean between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb sound and the Gulf of Aden. In the north are the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez (leading to the Suez Canal). The Red Sea is a Global 200 ecoregion.
Occupying a part of the Great Rift Valley, the Red Sea has a surface area of about 438,000 km2 (169,100 square miles ). It is roughly 2250 km (1398 mi) long and, at its widest point at 355 km (220.6 miles) wide. It has a maximum depth of 2211 m (7254 ft) in the central median trench and an average depth of 490 m (1,608 feet ), but there are also extensive shallow shelves, noted for their marine life and corals. The sea is the habitat of over 1,000 invertebrate species and 200 soft and hard corals and is the world's northernmost tropical sea.
Sharm el Sheikh , often known simply as "Sharm", is a city situated on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, in Janub Sina', Egypt, on the coastal strip between the Red Sea and Mount Sinai.
Sharm el-Sheikh is the administrative hub of Egypt's Southern Sinai province which includes the smaller coastal towns of Dahab and Nuweiba as well as the mountainous interior, Saint Catherine's Monastery and Mount Sinai. Sharm el-Sheikh is known as The City of Peace referring to the large number of international peace conferences that have been held there.
Hurghada is an Egyptian city and a tourist center on the Red Sea.
The city was founded in the early 20th century, and since the 1980s has been continually enlarged by Egyptian and foreign investors to become the leading seashore resort on the Red Sea. Holiday villages and hotels provide aquatic sport facilities for sailboarders, yachtsmen, scuba divers and snorklers.
Hurghada stretches for about 36 km along the seashore, and it does not reach far into the surrounding desert. The resort is a destination for Egyptian tourists from Cairo, the Delta and Upper Egypt, as well as package holiday tourists from Europe, notably Russians, Czechs and Germans. Until a few years ago it was a small fishing village. Today Hurghada counts 248,000 inhabitants and is divided into three parts: Downtown (El Dahar) is the old part; Sekalla is the modern part, and El Korra Road is the most modern part. Sakkala is the relatively modest hotel quarter. Dahar is where the town's largest bazaar, the post office and the long-distance bus station are situated.
The city is served by the Hurghada International Airport with scheduled passenger traffic to and from Cairo and direct connections with several cities in Europe. The airport has undergone massive renovations to accommodate rising traffic. Hurghada is known for its watersports activities, nightlife and warm weather. Daily high temperature hovers round 30 degrees Celsius most of the year. Numerous Europeans spend their Christmas and New Year holidays in Hurghada, primarily Germans and Italians.
Marsa Alam is situated near the Tropic of Cancer where the Arabian Desert meets the Red Sea, and it has the appearance of a tropical paradise with its palm trees, mangroves and sea coasts fringed with barrier coral reefs. It has already gained a strong reputation amongst scuba divers due to its numerous and unspoilt diving sites both along the coast and offshore. Sightings of spinner dolphins, dugongs and hammerhead sharks are a frequent occurrence for those who venture into its waters.
Until very recently, Marsa Alam was a small fishing village in Egypt, on the west coast of the Red Sea. However, it has rapidly increased in popularity, and since the opening of its International Airport back in 2001, it has started to become yet another favourite holiday destination on the Red Sea Riviera. In fact, most informed observers believe that it is destined to become as popular a resort as Sharm el Sheikh and Hurghada, within the next few years. However, its airport is still small and, as of May 2007, had only one departure gate.
Marsa Alam also has some inland attractions, such as the Emerald Mines and the Temple of Seti I at Khanais, near also is Marsa Alam Airport.
Average temperatures during the winter months (October to March) range from 18 to 35 degrees Celsius and during the summer months (April to September) from 20 to 45 degrees Celsius. The temperature of the Red Sea at this location during the year ranges from 22 to 29 degrees Celsius.
The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai is an inverted triangle-shaped peninsula in Egypt. It lies between the Mediterranean Sea (to the north) and Red Sea (to the south), forming a land bridge to Southwest Asia. Its area is about 60,000 km2. The Egyptians call it the Land of Fayrouz.
The Oases:
The word oasis is often used to describe a place where you can forget the cares of everyday life, relax,rest and renew yourself.
Egypt's oases are just that: unspoilt refuges from the modern world, pockets of civilization in the dramatic setting of the desert. Surrounded by sand and sky, the oases have a sense of timelessness,rare in the 21st century.
Man and nature have co-existed here since the Stone Age,but the stars,the rock formations and the dunes defy the calculation of human calendars.
Egypt's oases are still the most varied in the world, each with a distinguished character of its own.
Wherever you stay, enjoy the tranquility of the Bedouin lifestyle, the date groves and pigeon towers. For adventure and excitement, explore the majesty of the desert by camel or jeep safari; spend a night under the stars. Take a morning dip in the hot sulphur springs, the water and silt which have numerous curative properties.
In the Western Desert there are five oases, lying like islands in the ocean - Siwa, Baharia, Farafra, Dakhla and Kharga.
