Getting Around and From Cairo....

The most frustrating part of traveling through Egypt is the lack of many people that speak English... One of the first things i would recommend before traveling to Egypt is obtaining first a Lonely Planet and Second the Lonely Planet's guide to Egyptian Arabic... both books can be found on amazon.com and are relatively inexpensive... That being said I will enlighten new travelers to the things you will encounter traveling in downtown Cairo...

First off i would use the underground Metro train to get around the city unless of course you have a travel company that you are already working through... the Metro costs 1 EGP/$0.20 USD to ride until you leave the metro station... It is the fastest way to get around Cairo as the traffic with a taxi can take up to 2 hours to get from one side of Cairo to the Pyramids at Giza even!... The only down side to using the metro is that it is quite crowded, often times you will have to push your way through 15 people to fight your way onto a train car, and then fight the same battle getting out.. It is by no means a New York Subway, or London Underground...

If you must take a taxi there are a couple pieces of advice i have for this... First off there are two kinds of taxis in Cairo, there are the black and white street cabs and there are the yellow newer marked cabs... The black and white cabs look older and are more beat up usually.. also they do not have working meters in them, and you will have to haggle to get a good price out of them, which is rough and with the amount of time you want to spend in Cairo, im sure this is not something you will want to repeatedly have to do.. The yellow taxis by contrast have working meters and are actually very reasonable for the amount of driving they do...

One piece of advice i feel that i should give regarding traveling in Cairo is to beware of pick-pockets!.. I was walking in the Metro station and i felt a hand go into my pocket.. fortunately i had nothing in that pocket, but it was plain as day and quite good, cause i did not see who it was that put their hand in.. Personally i recommend wearing a vest with pockets inside the chest area... they work well for this type of traveling, plus you can have 4 different places to put stuff like passports, etc..

Next we have the Train traveling from Cairo to Alexandria, Luxor, Aswan, Kom Ombo, etc... This is a main express train that leaves from Ramses Station in Cairo to the above stated destinations.. This train is very reasonably priced considering the amount of traveling that one can do on it... There are two classes in which foreigners are allowed to ride on and that is 1st Class (Nefertiti Class) and 2nd Class or Coach... Either one of these is quite nice, but i personally would recommend using first class, because it really isnt much more expensive and there is hardly any riff raff or noise, plus the seats are nicer, etc... The main thing to know about using the Express Trains is that you need to purchase your tickets ahead of the time you wish to travel.. I would recommend going a day or two in advance of your trip to get the tickets because the trains fill up fast!.. If you have an international student ID, you will receive a 33% discount off your ticket no matter what class you ride in... If they say otherwise you will need to bargain for it...

As for walking around in Cairo, etc. for the most part people are quite nice... and you will do fine to bargain with people about almost anything that you want to buy... not usually will you have to bargain for food prices, they are fixed to very reasonable prices...