Egypt

Egypt has been on my list for as long as I can remember. It’s also my way into Africa: I haven’t been yet, so this trip (or Morocco) would mean I’ve been to every continent except Antarctica.

Cairo and the museums

Cairo first. The new Grand Egyptian Museum sits right beside the Giza plateau and brings Tutankhamun’s treasures together in one place for the first time. I’d also like to spend time in the old Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, and get lost in Islamic Cairo and the Khan el-Khalili bazaar.

The pyramids

Standing in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza is the moment I keep coming back to. It was built around 4,500 years ago, for the pharaoh Khufu, and stayed the tallest structure people had made for nearly 4,000 years. The Sphinx is right there too.

I want to see Saqqara as well. The Step Pyramid of Djoser is older than Giza, the first of all the pyramids, where the Egyptians worked out how to build in stone on that scale.

Alexandria

Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in 331 BC, and it became the capital of the Ptolemies, the dynasty that ended with Cleopatra. It was home to the great Library and the Lighthouse of Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders. Neither survives, but the Citadel of Qaitbay stands where the lighthouse did, and the modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a nod to the old library. Underground, the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa mix Egyptian, Greek and Roman styles in a way you don’t see anywhere else.

Up the Nile

• Luxor: the temples of Karnak and Luxor, and across the river the Valley of the Kings, where Tutankhamun’s tomb was found in 1922, and Hatshepsut’s temple cut into the cliffs.
• A Nile cruise from Luxor to Aswan, watching life along the river go by.
• Abu Simbel: Ramesses II’s temples, which were cut into blocks and moved up the hill in the 1960s to save them from the waters of Lake Nasser.

What draws me is how much history is layered here: the pharaohs, then Alexander and the Greeks, the Romans, and then centuries of Islamic Cairo, all in one country.