Giza rewards the broke traveller more than the rich one. The plateau ticket is 700 EGP, but the desert road behind it is free, the koshary is 35 EGP, and the Nile ferry across to Zamalek still costs two pounds. Three days on street-food money.
The asphalt ring road looping the plateau's western edge is outside the ticket gates. From the ridge you line up all nine Giza pyramids in one frame. Walk up from Sphinx Street in 25 minutes; guards check nothing on the outer loop.
The stable village pressed against the Sphinx's paws, where horses share alleys with bread carts. Walk Sphinx Street north into the residential grid for mosque courtyards, free tap-water sabils and pyramid views framed by laundry lines.
A mudbrick village school on the Saqqara Road where farming families have woven tapestries without preparatory drawings since 1952. The gallery domes are open to walk-ins and the looms are working, not staged for tourists.
The cheap cafés on the Sphinx entrance road have flat roofs facing the plateau. A 25 EGP glass of mint tea buys you a seat for sunset and, from 19:30, the free audio bleed and coloured floodlights of the Sound and Light Show.
Egypt's workhorse chain does the standard Cairo breakfast: foul medammes, taameya fried from split fava beans, and eggplant with tahina, all scooped with baladi bread. Order at the counter, pay first, eat standing.
A working-class Giza produce market with no tourist pricing at all: guava by the kilo, sugarcane pressed to order, tin kitchenware and secondhand galabeyas spread on tarps along the railway side streets.
Rice, lentils, macaroni, chickpeas, tomato sauce and fried onions layered in a metal bowl — the Egyptian dish that feeds a city for pocket change. The Dokki branch is bright, fast and busy with Cairo University students.
Plastic chairs on a Imbaba side street, grills going until dawn, and the liver-and-sausage sandwiches that made this place famous across Cairo. Order by pointing at the pans: kebda eskandarani, sogoq, mombar and hawawshi.
Egypt's first true smooth-sided pyramid, 40 km south of Giza and almost empty. The site ticket is a fraction of the plateau's, and unlike Khufu you can climb into the burial chambers at no extra charge, usually alone.
The palm groves and irrigation ditches covering ancient Memphis. Limestone fragments sit in front gardens, buffalo stand in the canals, and the dirt lanes between the mudbrick houses cost nothing to wander.
Twenty-eight acres of 1875 khedival planting: a cactus house, a lotus pool and shade trees older than the Egyptian republic. Entry costs less than a bottle of imported water and locals treat it as a picnic lawn.
The commuter boat crossing from the Imbaba landing gives you a Nile cruise for two pounds. Wooden benches, a diesel engine, and the sunset hitting the Cairo Tower and the west-bank tower blocks from mid-river.