Cairo

To see the Pyramids and Tutankhamun's treasures you have to visit Cairo. Much as you want to like this great city, it now contains around 22 million people and is growing by about a million every year. It is a city out of control. The streets are in permanent gridlock, the pavements are broken, litter and rubbish pile up, and desperate Egyptians accost you at every step. It is all very exhausting. However, there is no sense of personal danger. You feel very safe even walking the streets at night.
Due to a law that only finished buildings pay taxes, there are huge areas of apparently uncompleted jerry built blocks of flats. Some of them have people hiding in them. Others are genuinely abandoned, as there has been overbuilding in Cairo as in Europe. Combined with the dust blowing in from the desert, making everything grey and dirty, it is not an attractive place. A green retreat like the garden of the Mena House Hotel by the Pyramids is very welcome.
My tip is to ensure a peaceful retreat like a good hotel, meaning a modern chain hotel. We stayed in the old Cosmopolitan and visited the old Windsor but I couldn't recommend them.