Visitor Information

The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism has a colorful website (www.egypt.travel) with a fair bit of information (if you can navigate your way through the animation). The ministry also maintains offices in New York, 630 Fifth Ave., Ste. 1706, New York, NY 10111 (tel. 212/332-2570 or 212/956-6439); Chicago, 645 N. Michigan Ave., Ste. 829, Chicago, IL 60611 (tel. 312/280-4666 or 312/280-4788); Los Angeles, 8383 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 215, Beverly Hills, CA 90211 (tel. 323/653-8815 or 323/653-8961); Montreal, 1253 McGill College Ave., Ste. 250, Montreal H3B2Y5 (tel. 514/861-4420 or 514/861-8071); and London, Egyptian House, 170 Piccadilly, London W1V9DD (tel. 171/493-5282 or 171/408-0295).

The Ministry of Tourism offices in Egypt vary wildly in usefulness from the completely pointless (Luxor, for example) to the extremely helpful (in Aswan and Bahareya). Addresses and contact information have been listed in the relevant chapters throughout this book.

There are quite a few good online sources for information about Egypt:

• www.arabist.net is a political blog written by journalists with experience in Egypt and North Africa, and is a lot more trenchant than anything else produced locally.

• www.egy.com is one of my personal favorites, an idiosyncratic site devoted to the research of Samir Rafaat, author of two books on Cairo's historic buildings. Full of fascinating historical snippets that Rafaat digs up from the archives, his articles will have you seeing Cairo in a whole new way.

• www.egyptvoyager.com is one of those sites that never seems to be finished, but it does have a series of panoramic photos of Cairo that can be used to preview museums, buildings, and even shopping areas to decide whether you want them on your itinerary.

• www.travelblog.org/Africa/Egypt and www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-country/Egypt/tpod.html have up-to-date individual accounts of travel in Egypt. Quality varies, of course, but there's usually something fun and informative here.

• www.touregypt.net is run by an organization that calls itself the Association of Egyptian Travel Businesses on the Internet. Hectic and badly written, the site nevertheless has articles on just about everything and a large amount of useful information.

  In Egypt, the best place to go for maps is the American University in Cairo Bookstore.