Wednesday, 21 October 2009 21:42

Egypt Information, Egypt Holidays

Rate this item
(1 vote)
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

GENERAL INFORMATION EGYPT

PASSPORTS AND VISAS
British passport holders require a visa, obtainable on arrival. British tourists visiting Sharm El-Sheikh and the east coast of Sinai do not need a visa for visits of 2 weeks or less. For other parts of the Sinai and the rest of Egypt a visa is required. Other nationalities should contact the Egyptian Consulate, 2 Lowndes Street, London, SW1X 9ET - Tel: 020 7235 9719 or 9777 ext 30/37. Email: info@egyptianconsulate.co.uk. Website: www. egyptianconsulate.co.uk. At least 6-months validity is required on your passport.

VACCINATIONS AND HEALTH
Yellow fever immunisation essential if arriving from an infected area. Precautions against hepatitis A, typhoid and polio recommended plus malaria depending on area visited and time of year. Please consult your GP for up to date information.

CURRENCY
Egyptian Pound (LE) = 100 Piastres. Major credit cards accepted. ATM facilities available in major urban areas.

CLIMATE
Hot and sunny throughout the year with an average of 11 hours of sunshine a day in Cairo, Luxor and Aswan during the Summer and 8 hours in the Winter. Summer temperatures range from 31º C in Alexandria to 50º C in Aswan. Mediterranean coastal regions are cooler November to March with the possibility of short outbursts of rain. Night time, particularly further south and in Sinai can be markedly cool, often dropping below zero degrees.

TIPPING AND BARGAINING
Bargaining is common place in Egypt, with some rare exceptions. Tipping, known as baksheesh, is also common. Carry plenty of small change for this when visiting popular tourist areas.

 

Egypt is the place of origin of one of the greatest civilizations known to man. A story dating back over 5 millennia has gone out an unerasable print on the area, as shown by the one of the richest public video displays of ancient artefacts the world has always interpreted.

It got down with the Pharaohs and the union of upper and Lower Egypt over 5,000 yrs ago. In the many centuries that pursued, the Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Turks, Arabs and more latterly, the Europeans have played their portion in making the unique and gripping spectacle that we reckon today. Egypt is one of the most over the top and confusing finishes that you could always like to visit. Inextricably linked up to the umbilical that is the River Nile, Egypt is on the face of it disorderly and jumbled beyond reason. Don't be arsed around. The Egyptian experience will exercise and keep back a catching pulling on you, long after your visit is over.

To be sure, Egypt is a beautiful and enticing spot, offering deep blue skies, clear-white sands and sparkling-blue water in abundance. It's many archeologic hoarded wealths are arguably uncomparable, it's peoples, as friendly and hospitable as any you are e'er probable to touch. Think of Egypt and the opportunities are you will think of Cairo or the Great Pyramids. Actually there is so very much more thereto than that. Egypt is a big and various area and its many land sites and sounds are widely circularized. Getting around in a reasonable and logical way involves careful provision and the institution of a posed path embracing all of the berths that you bid to visit. The chase is a little guide, we can assist you arrange it all together.

Most journeys to Egypt commence in Cairo, the largest urban center in Africa and the marrow of the nation. A stay in Cairo would not be complete without a visit to the Pyramids and Sphinx at Giza. You should likewise view the Egyptian Museum, a walk around the fairs of Khan El-Khalili and Islamic Cairo. The adjacent halt is Luxor, home to the richest immersion of ancient Egyptian artifacts. Visits to the temples of Luxor and Karnak are a must on with the Pharaonic Tombs of the West Bank in the Valleys of the Kings and the Queens. Luxor is as well the principal nerve center for Nile Cruising with many vessels setting out from and ending here, including our partners, Sonesta and Oberoi. Sail paths departing from Luxor visit a number of land sites enroute to the southern urban center of Aswan, got famed by Christie and too a point of reversion or an boarding point for Nile sail vessels locomoting through to Luxor. The temple building complex of Abu Simbel is a popular digression for visitants to Aswan as is the Aswan High Dam and Lake Nasser.

What better means to reason a visit to Classical Egypt than to drop a couple of days slackening on the Red Sea. Hurghada and Sharm El-Sheikh are two of the best known refuges, both proffering access to Red Sea Dive and the dateless, natural beauty of the Sinai.

CAIRO

The largest metropolis in Africa, the symbolic working capital of the Arab world and the focal point of an integral nation. Cairo is family to over 16 million Egyptians and the terminus a quo for most visitants to the area.

Contrary to most citizenries expectations, Cairo is not as old as its auspicious environses might paint a picture. Overtopped by 5,000 twelvemonth old memorials, Cairo is a proportional newcomer, constituted in the 10th hundred. Much of the city that we regard today owes its inheritance to 19th century town contrivers from Europe, commissioned to make a modern metropolis to rival London, Paris and Rome.

In the 1950's population force per unit area went forth the Ithiel Town contrivers behind and what we are forgotten with is a teaming up melting pot of humankind, interspersed with a mixture of the old and the new. A apparently chaotic, disorganized combining of peoples, positions, noise smokes and traffic, with a good luck charm and resonance quite an unlike anything you have always known in front, except possibly in an Indiana Jones movie.

Cairo is a vast and rambling urban center and discovering your agency around its many sights and attractivenesses may appear, at first, to be a intimidating job. In existent fact this is not as unmanageable as it looks with most of Cairo's independent situations lying within range of the city center. For easiness of orientation, the midpoint of Cairo is defined as the area straight off adjacent to the Egyptian Museum, known as Midan Tahrir. Nigh by, to the immediate south of here are situated four of the five hotels which we have in Cairo, the 5th being situated at the Pyramids.

East from Midan Tahrir lies the gothic centre of the city known as Islamic Cairo, home to the illustrious street market places of Khan El-Khalili, the University and Al-Azhar Mosque. To the south-east of Islamic Cairo, the telling Bastion can be seen, dominating the sensible horizon from its spectacular berth on the eastern edge of the city. The Bastion's focal point is the Mosque of Muhammad Ali, one of the many historical situations and body structures with which the fort is sanctified. To the south-west of the Bastion you will discover the country known as Coptic Cairo or Old Cairo. Progressively popular with visitants the area is notable for its Coptic or early Christian keepsakes, such as the Hanging Church and the Coptic Museum. Some 6 kilometres to the south-west of Midan Tahrir, Cairo's most far famed landmarks can be witnessed. The Pyramids of Giza and the oracular Sphinx. Decidedly not to be escaped!

LUXOR

After the Pyramids of Giza, Luxor is Egypt's greatest and most popular draw. Lined as the world's largest open-air museum, Luxor and its surrounds are house to the largest assiduity of ancient archaeologic situations in the area.

From the second that you get in Luxor you are cognisant of its consuming presence, beauty and history. The location solo leaves you dyspnoeal and keep open for the queer modern day trespass and the impressions of time on the surrounds, aught much has modified in over 4,000 classes. You can't aid but stare in awe across the Nile at the orangish red escarp confronting you and question at the nobility that erstwhile lay down before it. We can be thankful, however, for the hoarded wealths that stay on for us to viewer today and for the noteworthy state in which they have been preserved.

The Luxor that we ascertain today is made up of three distinct surface areas. The West Bank of the Nile is family to the ancient capital of Thebes with its richness of ancient repositories and burial grounds. Luxor itself lies is on the East Bank with Karnak to the north-east. Together they furnish a posing for two of the most stunning ancient temple complexes on the Nile.

There is much to do and consider in the Luxor area. It is for certain worth of extra time within your schedule to countenance you to amply revalue the many antiquities on crack. The visions of the East Bank unaccompanied could hold you absorbed for an infinity but the abiding by should be admitted in every travel guidebook, wherever potential. The town of Luxor is made around the temple of the same epithet. Luxor Temple dates from the 13th C BC. Its power pylons, courts, avenues and refuges are all devoted to the Theban Gods. Further up the Nile lies the Tabernacle of Karnak, a complex of stalls, student residences, sanctuaries, power pylons and daggers, once again given to the Theban Gods. The layout here is on a grand scale of measurement and should not be hastened. The Luxor Museum and the little Mummification Museum are besides desirable of a sojourn.

The principal attracters for visitants to the West Bank are the graves and synagogues of the Burying ground of Ancient Thebes, the burial grounds of the pharaohs of egypt and their tabbies. The first memorials that most citizenries brush are the Colossi of Memnon, situated by the wayside enroute to the Vale of the Kings and the Vale of the Queens. Likewise noted are the Tombs of the Nobles and the Deir Al-Medina (Monastery of the Ithiel Town). The most popular temples to jaw are Deir Al-Bahri (Hatshepsut) and Medinat Habu (Ramses III).

ASWAN

Standing sedately on the East Bank of the Nile at the First Cataract, Aswan is Egypt's southmost city and gateway to the Sudan, Nubia and the rest of Africa.

Once a fort townsfolk, situated at the carrefours of the ancient trading paths, Aswan is right away a popular recourse goal and an boarding and debarkation point for the many cruise ships that sweep the Nile between here and Luxor.

Aswan is one of the driest populated positions in the world with rain coming about alone in one case or double in a ten. The dry, warm mood had Aswan popular with Wintertime holiday shapers, peculiarly in Victorian prison terms. The Summertime heat energy at that nonce overmuch to handle.

Lying exactly above the original Aswan Dam, with the newer and larger Aswan High Dam behind it, Aswan racks about at the point where the Nile enters Egypt. The river here is broad and royal, strawed with bowlders and islands, bounded by gilded stone graves to the West and lived by cs of feluccas as they supply their craft on the mildly running Nile waters.

RED SEA AND SINAI

Egypt's Red Sea is one of the world's best known and most popular dive surface areas. Its shores, particularly the Egyptian coastline on which Hurghada is situated and the coastal areas of southern and eastern Sinai, are besides household to some of Egypt's finest hotels and recourses.

The Red Sea was shaped over 40 million yrs ago. Its comparative enclosure on three sides by desiccated desert and quite a little scenery, high temperatures and a comparatively pocket sized influx of body of water from the Indian Ocean serve to create the Red Sea one the saltiest in the world. Diving is popular everyplace in the Red Sea area but the best loved with those in the know are the bodies of water that make up the Ras Al-Mohammed National Park, located at the animal foot of the Sinai peninsular, approximately Sharm El-Sheikh.

Sinai itself is one of the most awing and beautiful desiccate landscapes in the world. Skirted by the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea in the south, east and west, the Sinai Peninsula is infused in history, conflict, faith and resort. Compass after ambit of red-coloured mountain ranges give way to wry, moth eaten vales and fields, inhabited by the local Beduin citizenries and a astonishingly varied quantity of wildlife.

Diving aside, their are a number of terrene attractivenesses available to the visitant to Egypt's Red Sea coastline. All are accessible from Hurghada, our had refuge on the Egyptian mainland, besides as from Sharm El-Sheikh at the foot of the Sinai Peninsula.
Visitor attractivenesses roughly the Egyptian Red Sea coastline include the Monasteries of St. Paul and St. Anthony, situated exactly to the south of Zaafarana.
These are two of the oldest monasteries in Egypt, dating back to the 4th hundred. Farther afield is the Roman settlement of Mons Claudius, located in the Eastern Desert, between Hurghada and Luxor.
Southern Sinai renders memory access to some of the countries most far famed historical situations and experiences. St. Catherine's Monastery lies on a place took to be to be approximately the website of Moses Burning Bush and dates from the 4th 100. Scarcely to the south of here is Mt. Sinai, which is of great religious grandness to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.

Egypt Holiday, Cheap Offer, Budget Vacation, Honeymoon in Egypt
Egypt Holiday, Package Offer, Travel to Egypt, Last Minute Holiday in Egypt

 

 

Last modified on Monday, 07 June 2010 14:38

Related Video

AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site

Image Gallery

AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Login to post comments

Map - Egypt

JoomlaWatch Stats 1.2.9 by Matej Koval