Egypt, Africa
Cairo is the base for the Egyptian pyramid catalogue plus Alexandria on the Mediterranean. The pyramid sites cluster around Giza and Saqqara on hired-car routes. Alexandria has direct trains and local hotels.
| Where | Getting there | Why go |
|---|---|---|
| Saqqara and Memphis | About 1 hr 30 each way by car | The Step Pyramid of Djoser (the oldest stone pyramid, 4,700 years), the Saqqara plateau with multiple smaller pyramids, and the open-air museum at Memphis (the original Egyptian capital). Quieter than Giza, the real archaeology day. |
| Dahshur | About 1 hr each way by car | The Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid, the immediate predecessors to the Giza pyramids. You can usually walk inside the Red Pyramid without the Giza-style queue. Combine with Saqqara on a single hired-car day for the pyramid-evolution arc. |
| Alexandria | About 2 hr 30 each way by train | The Mediterranean port founded by Alexander the Great. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, the seaside corniche, and the lighthouse site at Qaitbay form a real culture-history shift from Cairo. |
| Fayoum | About 2 hr each way by car | The oasis governorate with Lake Qarun, the Wadi Al-Hitan whale-fossil UNESCO site, and the Tunis pottery village. Off the standard tourist circuit, real desert-and-water landscape. |