Below are more general observations and tips on going to Egypt.  The other parts of the trip can be found as follows: Luxor, Abu Simbel and Cairo, as well as more
comprehensive photos for Luxor/Abu Simbel and Cairo.

Overall, traveling to Egypt was a fascinating experience:  The sights – truly awe-inspiring.  The weather agreeable.  The people friendly.   

*The sunsets are beautiful.

*Nightlife:  In Cairo, there are several bars and clubs that serve alcohol and are frequented by the well-to-do.  Sangria, just across from the Conrad hotel, is a nice place for drinks as it overlooks the Nile, as is Sequoia.  Beware that many bars are poorly ventilated, which can make it uncomfortable since many Cairenes smoke and smoking is not banned in public places.  Nightlife in Luxor is mostly limited to the hotels and nothing to write home about.

*Food:  Compared to other middle east countries like Lebanon or Morocco, the food in Egypt is nothing to write home about.  You’ll get fairly mediocre, if solid Middle Eastern fare on the package tour circuit.  In Cairo, there are many more options including sushi.  We ate at a decent Thai restaurant called Sibai Sibai, a very good (and hard to book) place called Abu El Seed and a very good Lebanese on the Blue Nile boat in Cairo.  My fave was probably Abu El Seed for its tasty Egyptian and Middle Eastern cusine in an atmospheric setting.  Try the typical Egyptian dish of kushari (warning it can be heavy!).

*Egypt
reminded me a lot of India from the tropical feel, the sights, sounds
and smells: the zebra stripes on roadside curbs, the people milling
about.

*As every guidebook will mention, tipping or baksheesh is a
common practice by tourists and locals alike.  Carry two wads of cash:
one with the big bills and your baksheeh wad full of small notes.  Some
of the currency looks similar so be careful you don’t give out a 20
pound note thinking it’s a 1!

*There are cats everywhere.  Dogs are considered dirty iin Islam and so are very rare.

*When heading out for sightseeing, bring sunglasses, sunblock and hand sanitizer.  Also the public toilets in Egypt can be a bit dodgy so bring a little wad of toilet paper from your hotel.

*As
a tourist, you will invariably get accosted by touts that will try to
fleece you. Just be prepared and use your common sense.  Even hotels
will charge extra for arranging a taxi for you to go the airport.

*Yes
many Egyptians will either try to fleece you or grovel for tips, which
can be annoying, but they are mostly a friendly, curious people.  Twice
when I told them I was born in India, I heard "Amitabh Bhachan?!" as a
response…Bollywood is alive and well in Egypt!

*The most disturbing
experience was seeing an altercation between a man and woman on the
street where he was dragging the wailing woman by her hair.  The crowd
tried to break it up but he said something to them that clearly made
them stand back and let him get on with it – a sign of the culture.

*Egypt
sightseeing is skewed towards package tours, which seem to be factories
that churn people through the various sites.  So it is tougher to
travel independently but certainly doable. I was lucky to have a local
as a friend to show me around Cairo.  For Southern Egypt (Luxor and Abu
Simbel), I used New Star Tours who were responsive and good save for
the unrequested alabaster factory (read shopping) tour that they
included in my program. They told me they would stop this practice but
you should check.  I paid about $500 that included a full day of
Luxor’s sights (east annd west bank, lunch), the day trip to Abu Simbel
and a hot air balloon ride. You may be able to do better as I was
booking at the last minute for just 1 person.

*There are lots of Nile cruises on offer but the overnight ones didn’t appeal or seem at all romantic.  It looks like you get herded onto these huge boats that then trawl down the river.  Opt instead for a day trip on a felucca in Aswan.

*There
have been some terrorist events in past years and there is security -
guards and metal detectors – at every tourist destination and most
decent hotels.  That said, I never felt unsafe.  Moreover, I found the
ever-present tourism and antiquities police to be very friendly and
willing subjects to try out some Arabic words I’d learned.

*It’s quite a sight to look out over Cairo and see all the satellite dishes on building rooftops sprouting like mushrooms.

This covers the Cairo leg of my trip.  The other parts of the trip can be found as follows: Luxor, Abu Simbel and general Egypt tips and observations, as well as more
comprehensive photos for Luxor/Abu Simbel and Cairo.

Overview: I was lucky that the visibility was great during the three days I spent in Cairo seeing lots of sights, including:

The
Great Pyramids and the Sphinx in Giza: What can you say…the last remaining of the 7 Wonders of the World.  I’ve seen them pictured so often but they
are still impressive close-up.  The scale of the resources and manpower that had to be mobilized to build them boggles the mind.  I went on New Year’s Day and was lucky
that it wasn’t very crowded and made it into a mini desert hike. 

The Inside Scoop: if you get some time to yourself, wander round the site while
listening to tunes on your iPod.  I had Mozart’s Requiem on, which
worked.  I didn’t pay extra to go inside the pyramids and have heard mixed reviews about this.  You can book a metaphysical tour   that will entail a private visit to the King’s Chamber inside the pyramid to try to tap into the spiritual energy that people believe can be found in Egypt as covered by the New York Times.

The Egyptian Museum: this contains all sorts of
artifacts from the various periods in Egyptian history including the
contents of King Tut’s tomb.

The Inside Scoop: Unless you’re a big
buff, go first to the King Tut exhibit and then take it from there. I
only spent an hour or so – the museum is more like a warehouse: musty
and poorly lit.

Islamic Cairo:  My friend Sebastian took me to the Ibn
Tulun, Sultan Hassan and Al Azhar mosques. The latter is best known but
the 1st two are prettiest. The Ibn Tulun is simple and very peaceful.
You can walk up he tower and get a great view of Cairo.  Next to it is
the Gayer Anderson Museum.  It contains beautiful furnishings and art
from various parts of the Middle East that Gayer collected back in the
day. It’s also where they filmed a fight and chase scene in The Spy Who
Loved Me.  The museum docents are friendly, there is never a crowd and
it was worth the 30-45 minutes.

The Inside Scoop: Climb the tower at the Ibn Tulun mosque for a great view of Cairo (you can even see the pyramids on a clear day as shown above).  Then walk through the streets of old, Islamic Cairo to get a great
sense for how lots of Cairenes live.  You’ll see musty but lively
shops, men idling in cafes with their shisha pipes and general street
life. It reminded me a lot of India.

Bab Zuwayla: The
last standing gate of Old Cairo and is on the way to the Khan El
Khalili market.  You can climb to the ramparts and up the towers for
another great view of the city.

Citadel: Impressive from the outside but we never went in as it’s apparently not as great inside.

Khan El Khalili market:  Famous market that is always thronged.

The Inside Scoop:
*Most of the stuff on offer is mass-produced crap that the merchants will hassle you about.
*There
is a New Khan El Khalili market within the larger market that has no
hassle, fixed prices where I picked up a black and white print of a
Cairo street scene.
*Rest your feet, grab a tea and/or shisha and
people watch at the El Fishawy cafe in the middle of the market. It’s
open 24 hours and is a true Cairo institution.

Coptic Cairo:
Egypt has played a big role in Christianity contributing mosasticism,
the cult of the virgin and the cross (which is taken from the ancient
Egyptian ankh). Ten percent of Egyptians are Christian and most of them
are Coptics, which have their own pope. More about them here.  We
headed to that part of town where the Coptic institutions are centered
and visited the
  and the Coptic Museum.  The artwork in
the Museum was amazing.  It was nice walking that part of town -
cleaner air, quieter, more tranquil and, importantly, not much in the way of touts or hassle.

The Inside Scoop: There is a little group of shops nearby selling decent quality Coptic handicrafts and artwork.

This covers the Abu Simbel leg of my trip.  The other parts of the trip can be found as follows: Luxor, Cairo and general Egypt tips and observations, with more
comprehensive photos for Luxor/Abu Simbel and Cairo:

Overview: There are two temples at Abu Simbel.  With the construction of the High Dam at Aswan and Lake Nasser’s rise, they would have been
flooded but Egypt along with the UN decided to physically move the
temples 200 meters so that they would be safe from encroachment. It
took $36 Million, 5 years and 3,000 workers working round the clock to
complete the project.  I think that engineering feat rivals those of
the ancients in erecting their pyramids, temples and obelisks.  The
temples and the carvings in them seem remarkably well-preserved; better
than those in Luxor.  It’s also interesting to see Nubians feature in
the depictions.  Apparently there are many more people of Nubian
descent to be found in modern day Sudan than Egypt.

The Inside Scoop:

*Spend
a night in Aswan. There seemed to be more to the city than Luxor and I’ve heard that that the old Cataract hotel and Elephantine Island are great places to stay and visit. I
particularly enjoyed sitting in a cafe outside the train station
sipping a mint tea and simply taking in the sights and sounds of the
evening rush.

*That said, you can also do Abu Simbel as a (long)
day trip from Luxor. I did this as I didn’t feel like dealing with
booking a hotel in Aswan when I had one in Luxor (which was also free
using points). But it’s a long day – leave at 7 am, back at 11 pm.

*You
will travel in an armed convoy to and from Abu Simbel. The trip will be
a bit harrowing as the drivers think they’re Formula 1 racers or
something with their tailgating and drafting off each other. They also
have a communication protocol to signal oncoming stops, traffic, etc to
the rest of the convoy.  For example, turning on the left blinker indicates there is an oncoming vehicle (instead of indicating a left turn).

This covers the Luxor leg of my trip.  The other parts of the trip can be found as follows: Abu Simbel, Cairo, general Egypt tips and observations, as well as more
comprehensive photos for Luxor/Abu Simbel and Cairo :

Overview: Luxor, known as Thebes by the ancients, means palaces in
Arabic.  It was where the last of the ancient egyptian dynasties based
their capital. Situated on the Nile, the sights are divided into West
Bank and East Bank and typically involve half-day tours.  On the West
Bank you have the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, the Colossi of Memnon and
some temples, notably that of Queen Hatshepsut.

The East Bank highlights are the impressive Karnak Temple complex and the beautiful Luxor Temple.

I crammed both into 1 day due to time constraints.  I also went for my first ever hot air balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings.  You go early in the morning when the winds are calmer and to watch the rising sun.  The balloon prior to our flight got blown off course to the other side of the mountain and so our pilot kept us low to the ground.  But this was a boon because visibility wasn’t all that great anyway and we got to float above a village with a bird’s eye view to how these people live.

The Inside Scoop:
*Luxor
is a tourist town.  Everything there is designed around tourists from
the restaurants along the Nile to the boats to the souvenir shops.
Spend 2 days max.

*I liked the East Bank sights better than the
West Bank. The temples were well preserved and truly awe-inspiring. The
Valley of the Kings was a bit anti-climactic as your ticket only let’s
you into 3 tombs. It’s crowded and you’re basically going into these
tunnels whose contents have long since been removed.

*They
charge extra to visit King Tut’s tomb and it’s not worth it.  My guide
wisely told me to see his artifacts @ the museum in Cairo.

*A cab to/from west bank hotels to airport should be 40 – 45 Egyptian pounds.

*My
tour operator, New Star Egypt, did a pretty good job, however I was
very annoyed that they included a visit to an alabaster "factory"
during the day in Luxor. There I was given a mildly interesting
presentation on how they make handicrafts followed by a hard sell in
their store. I had not agreed to this with New Star and told them as
much. They apologized and said they’d be upfront about this in the
future but who knows.  The guide book said this was a common practice
among operators who no doubt get a commission. Point being, if you
don’t want a shopping excursion in your trip, make this known to your
operator.  That said, the handicrafts did seem better quality/more
genuine than the crap that the touts and vendors in town try to sell so
I did purchase something.

*The balloon ride is not a must-do and a bit expensive (~ $100 all in), but it is quite an experience.