Egypt's ancient masonry structures have long been on Country Life's Tiffany Daneff bucket list, but it took the opening of the new Waldorf Astoria hotel and a promised peek at the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum to get her there. As the plane tipped its wings for the descent to Cairo International Airport, the picture in my mind of the four day trip ahead — my first to Cairo — was of Obelix clambering up the face of the Sphinx and breaking off its nose. Ever since reading Asterix and Cleopatra as a child I have dreamed of seeing the pyramids of Giza.
The worry was, would they live up to my expectations? The short answer is yes. That’s not just to do with their monumental size, but because in all the wonderful chaos and flux that is modern Cairo neither they nor the sphinx have been spoiled by the trappings of tourism. I’m not sure what I expected of Cairo — a city of 22 million and growing — but construction must be in its DNA.
From the raising of the Great Pyramid of Giza in around 2600 BC to the present government’s futuristic mega development, 28 miles outside Cairo, of a New Administrative City (which will house the main government departments, ministries and foreign embassies) the vision is consistently huge and the scale intended to astonish. Perhaps, it is a need to fight the endless sands of the desert. Our hotel, the Waldorf Astoria Cairo Heliopolis , which is a brilliantly convenient 10 minute taxi ride from the airport, offers another example of th.
