Cairo Day Trip from Sharm El Sheikh: Pyramids, Sphinx & the Grand Egyptian Museum

You came to Sharm for the sea. But four hundred kilometres west, half-buried in the desert light, stand the only monuments that made it onto the ancient world's list of wonders — and stayed standing. This is the day you go to meet them.

After the long road west, the Giza Plateau opens in front of you: the Great Pyramid of Khufu rising higher than you expected, the Sphinx watching the horizon it has watched for millennia, the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure lined up behind. Inside the Grand Egyptian Museum — the largest of its kind on Earth — Tutankhamun's gold, colossal statues and treasures you've only seen in photographs stand an arm's length away, while your guide fills the silences with the stories behind the stone.

It is easy to forget how old this is. The Pyramids were already ancient when Cleopatra ruled — older to the Romans than the Romans are to us. Every empire that ever came to see them has since fallen; the stones stayed. Standing at their base, you are not so much looking at history as stepping briefly into it, one more traveller in an unbroken line stretching back forty-five centuries.

By evening you begin the journey back to the coast, quieter than you left. You arrived a guest at a beach resort; you return someone who has stood at the foot of the last ancient wonder and looked the Sphinx in the eye. The Red Sea will still be there tomorrow — but this is the day you will be telling people about for years.