TRAVEL @ EGYPT

Egyptian cuisine combines many of the best traditions of Middle Eastern cooking. There are both large hotel restaurants and smaller specialist ones throughout the main towns. Some of the larger hotels in Cairo and its environs have kitchens serving top-quality cosmopolitan dishes. In the centre of Cairo, American-style snack bars are also spreading. Restaurants have waiter service. Although Egypt is a Muslim country, alcohol is available in cafe-style bars and good restaurants.

National specialities:
• Foul (bean dishes).
• Stuffed vine leaves.
• Grilled aubergines.
• Kebabs.

National drinks:
• Kahwa (thick, strong coffee).
• Shay bil na'na' (mint tea).
• Karkaday (clear, bright red drink made from hibiscus flowers).
• Aswanli (dark beer made in Aswan).
• Zibib (alcoholic aniseed-flavoured drink).

Legal drinking age: 21.

Tipping: 10 to 12% is added to hotel and restaurant bills but an extra tip of 5% is normal. Taxi drivers generally expect 10%

At times it seems as if Egypt sleeps by day and wakes up at night. In any town, from around sunset until the small hours of the morning, people start spilling onto the streets, congregating in coffee shops and restaurants or just strolling in the company of their fellow citizens. Go to any water front - along the Nile in Cairo and Luxor, or the seafronts in Alexandria and Sharm el Sheikh - and you'll find the corniche humming with the chatter of friends cruising arm in arm to catch the breeze. Street vendors selling kebabs, chi-sellers shouldering giant urns and trinket merchants with the latest colourful imports vie for the attentions of passers-by. For the visitor, this is the place to meet the locals, gauge the national mood and share in the jubilations of a local football success.

The most interesting shopping area for tourists in Cairo is the old bazaar, Khan-el-Khalili, specialising in reproductions of antiquities. Jewellery, spices, brass, copper utensils, cotton goods and Coptic cloth are some of the many special items. There are also modern shopping centres available, particularly near Tehrir Square. Haggling is expected, and usually encouraged: goods do not have a fixed price, but are worth whatever the vendor feels happy selling at in balance with whatever the buyer is happy purchasing for at any given moment in time. External factors therefore play their part - including the mood the buyer is in, a row the vendor may have had with his wife in the morning, sales - or lack of sales - made earlier in the day. Whatever factors impinge on the sale, it is important to enjoy the process of agreeing a price and the human interaction it brings, and not feel that it is a device employed by the vendor for charging above the going rate. There are people, however, who are out to cheat the unsuspecting tourist in Egypt, selling fake goods or charging for bogus services. Their hard sell, particularly around the pyramids at Giza, can be highly intrusive and upsetting: if you take photographs of any man on a camel, for example, expect to pay even if you didn't plan on having the person in the frame.