Well let’s talk about Cairo. Egypt was always on our wish list but Cairo wasn’t for many good reasons. After the Arab spring however, I’ve always wanted to visit Cairo and see how it looks after the revolution. Egypt has too many similarities with Iran. They have almost the same size and population. They are both Islamic nations in the middle with the great ancient histories that both are proud of but not much in their modern world to be proud of. Both countries suffer from poor economical conditions and poor managements. Cairo and Tehran are multi million people mega cities with heavy traffic and pollution problem, with the same conflicts and paradoxes, both have mostly younger population that are seeking better opportunities, jobs, education and better life conditions. As you might already know, we hate big cities anyway and try to skip them as much as possible when travelling but for all these reasons and also because of the change in our plans, we had to have a short stop in Cairo when we arrived in Egypt. You can read about our first impression of Egypt and how we tried to stay out of Cairo in this post.
With all the information available withing reach about every destination especially touristic destinations like Cairo, you think that you know well enough about your destination prior to travelling. I’m definitely read a lot about where we are going, as you might already know and watched few documentaries about current Cairo and watched “the square”, a great documentary about Tahrir square in Arabic spring and what happened there. Cairo was different though!! It was a big shock to us because the real Cairo was way worse or rather say way different from how we imagined it. And I didn’t even fantasize Cairo before getting there. I’ll let you know what I thought before getting there:
- Cairo is heavily polluted and extremely dirty. Well it was correct but way worse than our imaginations. It looked like a big rubbish bin.Big piles of rubbish everywhere even on roadsides in highways!
- Cairo traffic is bad. In reality it was the worst that we’ve ever seen anywhere in the world. Definitely worth than Tehran and probably even worse than New Delhi and Mumbai. Aggressive drivers, non stop honking and literally we haven’t seen even one car that looked untouched. Worst part of all was carriages with horses and donkeys were part of the traffic, even on highways.
Well, let’s stop complaining about the madness of Cairo and get to the good parts 🙂
Visiting Islamic Cairo:
Cairo is fan-shaped, narrowest in the south, where the river valley is wedged between desert escarpments, and widest in the north, where the valley blends into the delta of the Nile. Originally the City was on the eastern banks of the Nile but gradually developed over the western sides.
The three oldest areas constitute densely populated poorer neighborhoods that virtually surround a relatively Westernized downtown core. The largest of these is the medieval city built under the Fāṭimid dynasty (909–1171).
The plan for the first morning was taking an Uber from our hotel in Giza to Bab Al-Futuh which is the northern gate of the Islamic Cairo. Giza is located on the west banks of Nile and crossing over Nile in the morning rush hour took us almost an hour to get to the Islamic Cairo know also as Medieval Cairo and Old Cairo as well.
The Uber driver dropped us somewhere in Cairo city center and said that it was the old Cairo but I knew that we weren’t on the right spot but we had to get out and it was useless to discuss further with him and to be honest, we both felt more comfortable to walk rather than sit in a car with a crazy driver! Where he dropped us was the southern side of the Old city where all the historical monuments are located within the old city walls.
After buying an Egyptian SIM card and getting some Egyptian Pound from a local bank ATM, we decided to walk through the local neighborhood outside the old city to get to the northern gate and enter the old city from there and see the real daily life. Wasn’t sure how touristic the old town can be so we didn’t want to lose a chance to see the real city before getting in.
It was obvious that we are in the more traditional and poor neighborhood but it was really authentic and nice. Tea and coffee houses with old men having their morning coffee and reading the newspaper. All the locals we met were extremely kind and welcoming and wanted to start a conversation or simply wave their hand in the air and say hello and welcome to Cairo!!! This bit sounds interesting because we were just 10 minutes away from touristic spots just on the other side of the wall but clearly tourists were not common in their neighborhood. After about half an hour we got to the northern gate of the Islamic Cairo, “Bab Al-Futuh”.
Walking in the Old Cairo, it instantly feels calmer as there was no cars inside so all of a sudden all the non stop honking vanished and gave its place to a nice big plaza surrounded with lots of trees with locals enjoying their shades on a hot autumn day and birds were happily chirping around us. It was almost 11:00 am but most of shops were still closed.
Leaving the plaza and walking down the main street, it was obvious that all the local shops were open but the souvenir shops were mostly closed as most of tourists come to this part of the town later in the afternoon.
We’ve spent hours walking through narrow alleys of the Old Cairo with medieval buildings, getting in and out Mosques and enjoying life going by. Especially closer to the lunch time, it was the rush hour for the bakeries, everyone from women to the kids to the old men all having a tray of fresh bread on their head or in their hands and were heading home for lunch.
As we kept going toward south, shop owners started to ask us to walk in and see their goods and more touristic cafes and restaurants started to pop up on both sides, street got busier and more chaotic and obviously more motorcycles appeared as well and we knew that we are getting close to Khan El khalili bazaar and al Azhar mosque.
Before getting deeper in the market, let me tell you something, I normally dress conservatively when travelling in more conservative countries and I feel more comfortable doing that. It’s more easier to walk around without attracting unnecessary attention and I found it even easier to get close to women as well and start a conversation. I thought that I did the same in Cairo but apparently it wasn’t enough. I could literally feel the heaviness of men’s look on me all the time even Amir noticed that as well. We’ve seen few female tourists in shorts, but they were part of a bigger tours with the tour guide but I mean if I received unnecessary attention dressed like the photo above, not sure how comfortable they were with shorts! Cairo by far was the worst place to walk around as a solo woman!
I forgot to mention it above on the worst things about Cairo, this item needs to be added to the list too!
When we were driving from the airport to Giza and all over town, in all the advertisements, women are shown uncovered with western outfits. Prior to our trip I also watched few Egyptian TV series and in all of them women shown without Hijab but in the real Egypt, I haven’t seen any woman without Hijab. Don’t get me wrong, if women are covered or not, it’s a personal choice,but I just wanted to say that the real Egypt is way more conservative than it is pictured in the advertisement or on TV. Probably there will be quite a lot in Cairo modern city center but in the Giza, Old Cairo and around Tahrir square and train station, I’ve seen pretty much seen none.
So considering all these facts, I dressed up more conservative the next day comparing to what I’d worn the first day (Above).
Ok let’s get to the famous Khan El-Khalili bazaar vibe. Pretty much if you google this bazaar, you’ll see thousands of photos from this spot:
Well, I’m telling you that it’s literally just this spot that looks like this and the rest of the market is not even close. The whole old town architecture is beautiful but you won’t get as many covered bazaars with amazing arches and dome shaped ceiling as it is pictured in the media
The other let down of the bazaar was the goods on offer. We found nothing authentic or from the local craftsmen. In fact, lots of Moroccan lamps ( Low qualities), Turkish lamps and bits of pieces from everywhere except Egypt was available to buy. I’m sure if you pick a nice shopping guide, they can take you to nice places to buy Egyptian cotton or precious stones but nothing obvious in a big bazaar like Khan el khalili.
Well I’m not promoting the bazaar but I have a good reasons for that. It wasn’t as good as I expected comparing to the other bazaars in the big cities in middle east and north Africa.
The other problem was the food!!! Absolutely nothing interesting on offer in the whole bazaar. There are some touristic spots closer to Al Azhar mosque which didn’t look good at all. all the local food stalls were only Falafel places that i wasn’t brave to try even though we are pretty much into local food and street foods but it was something about them that didn’t feel right. We had Falafel all over Lebanon and Jordan but the food stalls in Cairo didn’t seem that inviting.
So for the whole day, we just stopped at the cafe next to El Fishawi famous cafe for a drink which was a failure and another spot for lunch which it was a failure as well. All you get in these touristic spots are beggars and crazy bills with no change returned,
In general my advice is stay away from anywhere even slightly touristic but unfortunately sometimes even we couldn’t avoid it.
Long story short, we didn’t like south of the old Cairo and we enjoyed the northern side the best. More authentic with real people who were really nice and kind.
We decided to walk back north and get an Uber from the same gate that we entered.
The second Uber experience in Cairo was much more pleasant than the first one because we had a much nicer driver but it took us a painfully hour and a half to get back to Giza. Uber only cost 8 NZD dollar for this ride in heavy traffic!
We had a quick bite for dinner from a local restaurant in Giza and after enjoying a peaceful sunset over the Pyramids from our hotel rooftop and went to bed early.
Cairo Egyptian Museum:
For the second and the last day in Cairo, our plan was tight. We went to see the great Pyramids, first thing in the morning. If you are interested in our visit to Pyramids, read about it here.
Then the plan was going to Ramses train station to buy our day train ticket to Luxor which supposed to be the biggest challenge of the day. If you are asking why, read about it here.
And finally we wanted to walk from the train station to Tahrir square to get the feeling of the today’s Cairo and spend some time there and then visit Cairo museum.
Since the rest of the day is already covered in previous posts, let,s go directly to the museum part!
Well, we walked for almost 45 minutes from Ramses train station to Tahrir square which wasn’t too much fun but having fun wasn’t the purpose, it was more about knowing about the real life in Cairo and I must say that this part of Egypt looked exactly like Tehran to me.
We got to the museum right next to Tahrir square around 2:30 in the afternoon and museum was only open till 5:00. It’s in a quite street, one side of the street in Tahrir square and the side to a nice boulevard packed with hotels overlooking the Nile. On both sides of the streets there’s a security check and apart from tourists buses everyone should walk to the museum entry. Again getting to the museum gate, there’s another security check with a long queue, you pass that one and you get to the ticket booth. We went to buy the ticket and then realized that we don’t have enough local cash to pay for museum entry including the mummies room so I gave the credit card instead. He stared at me and said, cash only!!! Well, a biggest touristic spot in the whole Egypt with only foreign tourists as the customers, only local cash? really? Well he pointed us to the direction that the ATM machine was in the museum, when we got there, two men were working on the ATM machine and they said it won’t be ready for another hour and pointed us to another one exactly on the other side of the museum, guess what, that one ran out of paper and didn’t give us cash. We tried the local cafe and they didn’t accept to give us cash even if we buy something from them. In total frustration, we got out of the museum passed through both security checks again to go to the other side of the Tahrir square to get cash and got through securities again and finally got inside the museums. We didn’t buy ticket for professional camera and after a long conversation while passing through the third security check, they let us take our camera gear in and not using it because there was no safe locker to put you camera in before entering the museum so practically because we had a big camera we had to pay for it!!!! After all the hassles we got in!!!!! And you know what, it definitely worth it!!! Museum building is pretty much worn down. all the display cabinets are in poor conditions because in 2020 they are moving to the grand Egyptian museum but still nothing can take away the beauty of everything gathered under one roof there. I could imagine the joy of archaeologists discovering these treasures.
Unfortunately we had less than two hours to go through all of it and most of the pieces didn’t have any labels on them. But the whole museum is in ground and upper floor, separated by different eras of Egyptian kingdoms with two mummy rooms on both ends of the upper floor. Even if you pay for the photography still you can not take photos in the mummies room and the section that they keep all the famous gold masks and dogs and jewelry section so I don’t think it worth to pay for photography permit. Not sure how the museum will look like in terms of permits but it’s one of the biggest projects of Egypt and it looks like it’s going to be epic.
Color combinations of paintings and decorations, carvings, everything was amazing and on top of all, seeing mummies from thousands of years ago with all the details even hair and nails was stunning. If I had a chance to re plan our schedule, I would allow for at least 4 hours in the museum and definitely had a proper meal before getting in. We were starving, since we didn’t have lunch before getting in 🙂
We left museum at 5:00 when they closed down and finally after two days in Cairo, we found a very nice cafe and had a proper dinner before getting back to our hotel for our last night in Cairo.
In the next post, we travel south by train next to the Nile to go to Luxor!
