Quite some time ago, we went on a cruise on Norwegian Sun to Egypt.
If I had to guess, I'd say probably the first introduction of many people to Egypt is through a picture of the pyramids. Going to Egypt, for an uninitiated person like me anyway, is synonymous with going to see the pyramids. The most famous Egyptian pyramids are those found at Giza on the outskirts of Cairo. I didn't know this until I started researching for the trip. I wasn't totally ignorant, of course; I knew many pyramids were located in a huge Egyptian desert. Don't pyramids show up all the time in pictures and movies with a stern looking guy in Arab garb riding high on a camel marching up a sand dune bathed in the glow of the setting sun? Well, that was the sort of image the mention of the pyramids would unfailingly conjure up in my mind anyway.
About Cairo my knowledge did not extend far beyond the fact that it was a huge city and that it happened to be the capital of Egypt. I probably would not be able to tell a picture of Cairo from a picture of, say, Istanbul or Karachi. Pyramids and Cairo were not connected in my mind other than that they were both in Egypt and that I would not have the bragging rights for saying I've been to Egypt unless I had both of them covered on this trip. It was indeed a pleasant surprise, therefore, a surprise offered by Google Map, that the most famous Egyptian pyramids are literally a stone's throw from Cairo. When we reach Cairo, we reach those pyramids; we could kill two birds with one stone.
