Egypt – Cairo

Cairo, Egypt

There is surprisingly little to see in Cairo city centre, for its size – the largest city in Africa. The Nile is an obvious one but it is a river like many others around the world, so its crowning glory has to be the Egyptian Museum. It is impressive (being replaced by the new museum opening in 2021) and holds hundreds of artefacts, mummies, statues of the Pharaohs etc. Get along to the Citadel for views over Cairo and see here the Mohammad Ali Mosque and the surrounding buildings inside the elevated fortress. Cairo is quite shambolic in many areas, especially the outer areas and maintenance of buildings and roads seems unheard of. Just my opinion but the city (apart from the two glorious buildings mentioned) failed to impress me.

This was one city I visited in my tour of Egypt. The other sites I reviewed are here so click on the place to see them. Alexandria, Cairo to Alexandria by train,       Sakkara and Memphis, and the Giza Pyramids.

Ciro was founded in 968AD but did not become a capital until 1168. It’s home to some 9 million people, crammed together to form a mega-city of heavy, noisy, polluting traffic, new and old buildings and a high police presence. Depending on which source you read, it is the largest or one of the largest cities in Africa. I certainly felt that and I have to say that, to date, it is also one of the most poverty stricken cities I have visited.

Despite the more modern (but “seen better days”) centre, the outskirts are jammed full of shoddy, clearly unplanned and illegally built housing blocks with lack of tarmacked roads, street lighting and amenities. Lack of maintenance to roads, pavements and many buildings, actually make them a danger to use from a Westerners point of view. However, Cairo survives and people here are used to it.

I looked up what to see in central Cairo and having given it only a day to see was restricted on where to go. Yes, there is the old town Coptic area with its Christian and Orthodox religion churches and Cathedrals, but I felt this was going to be yet another Medina style visit and I had seen many of these already so was not entirely enticed to it. It was also some way away from the centre but accessible by Metro…. but maybe another time !

I settled on seeing a couple of places, one of which would mean a longish taxi drive and as these were two large sites to see, I wanted to give myself more time here. So, straight after breakfast I got my hotel to order me a taxi to the centre of Cairo and to get a price for the journey. I knew that taxis were unmetered (and any price paid by a tourist was bound to be way overinflated), so I got an idea of a price from the reception guys.

Get used to tourist versus local prices!

Here it is clear that there are two prices for everything – one for tourists and one for Egyptians – even the Pyramids and Museums blatantly display the two tier price structure in their entrance fees boards. I asked other hotel guests what they were paying for taxi trips and a common price seemed to come out.

However, an Egyptian guy showed me what he would pay on Uber (about a quarter of the tourist price). He then said even the Uber drivers would try to renegotiate the agreed price once they found out you were a tourist, when they arrive to pick you up.

Taxis

Best advice here is to ask around from reliable sources what the price should be before getting into a taxi so you know what you can haggle them down to. I asked the hotel receptionists and it was invaluable (and hilarious) when the drivers make their first offer and you know what you can get them down to as being reasonable, even though it is still much higher because you are a tourist .

As I was in a hotel in Giza, about 40-50 mins from the centre of Cairo, with no obvious public transport, buses or Metro that went to the centre. Thus taxis were the only option ….. and there are so many taxis in Cairo that no wonder the air pollution is so bad!!! BTW, a Cairo taxi is not like a western European taxi, those here are often beat up semi wrecks, seatbelts that don’t work and ripped seats so do not be surprised at their condition ! Some are unique in their interior as in the one I got – see the pic below.

– even had decorations and souvenirs to buy attached to the dashboard …! I wouldn’t want to be in the firing line of those sharp glass pyramids if I ever got thrown forward, especially as there are no seat belts to hold you bak!

Watching out the windows, you pass along broken up roads, run down buildings and donkeys and carts are everywhere out of the centre. Even the motorway section had central walls that had fallen down onto the carriageways and clearly not been touched for ages, – cars just swerved around them nonchantly.

Camels were a hitting hazard as they strolled along the main road and even kids were playing football in one carriageway and a jogger was using the central reservation as his running track. Cars drive at high speed and brake fast and with no enforcement of seatbelts it can be a bit harrowing. I didn’t use a taxi unless really necessary for these reasons, preferring to walk where possible but also to see more close up.

What to see in Cairo.

First stop in Cairo was the Egyptian Museum next to Tahrir Square. The taxi dropped me off and as I got out near the entrance kiosk an older Egyptian guy asked where I was going, I said the museum and he immediately said it was closed for 30 minutes for prayer and that I should come back and he suggested visiting the big market nearby.

Strange I thought, I don’t remember seeing that on their webpage so didn’t believe him. He started giving me directions to the market and insisted I went there as it was a really good place to visit. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the museum doors open and people coming and going so I humoured him and said ok and said I will go to the next door famous Tahrir Square.

He seemed annoyed and again insisted that the market was good for tourists…… My first experience of trickery that can often happen here. He was obviously set up here to detract tourists into the market away from the Museum for profit. Annoyingly this was being done in full view and earshot of the museum officials who did not seem at all concerned.

I later read up on a couple of blogs and saw that this guy is well known for this – lesson learned- do more research beforehand ! I walked away from him and actually headed for the square in front as I did want to to see it anyhow. Here I took some pics of what is now a huge concrete and semi garden/paved area. It’s not very attractive but it gives you a great view of the nearby grandiose buildings, the several 5 star hotels that surround it and the biggest flagpole I have seen yet !

I did 10 minutes of wandering the square that was strangely empty of people but with a police presence around it and remembered that this was often the main protest meeting area of many political events including the more recent military overthrow of the Government….. now I understand the obvious Police presence.

I headed back to the Museum, into the large hut that acts as a security entrance – get used to them as they are all over Egypt on entry to many public buildings including hotels. I queued to walk through the metal detector archway, watch the seven or so police lazing back on chairs, texting on mobiles, smoking cigarettes and generally doing anything but attend to security.

As I went in I set off the metal alarm – probably my watch but the nearby teenage-looking policeman glanced up from his YouTube posting on his mobile, casually looked back and said nothing. I carried on through unchecked. I mention this now as I found this manner and attitude common on any checkpoints here.

Why they do them baffles me as no-one ever seemed to be checked and the alarms go off constantly and security seems more interested in smoking and chatting in groups, rarely looking at the people entering.

Egyptian Museum

The new Grand Egyptian Museum has been due to open for many years. Click here for a general website. There have been constant delays stretching over the years, so who knows when it will open. It still hasn’t got an official website yet! It’s been delayed every year, for another year, since 2019. Latest info is it is opening at the end of 2021.

So check timings and see if the old museum here in Tahrir Square is still open beforehand.

The plan is that when the new one opens this old one will close …. when ever that is  … so don’t end up going to the new one too early or the old one too late!

Once through the open-air entrance area head to the right, as here is the ticket office. It’s not such an obvious building but it is here, outside, that you get your ticket before approaching the building itself. There are various prices according to how much of the museum you wanted to see. I got a ticket for everything not knowing what I may miss otherwise and it was good intuition.

Ticket was 300 EGP,  including the Tutankhamen exhibition (a must see) and if you want to take photos inside its another 50 EGP, which I got. However, no-one ever checked I had the ticket authorising me to take pics when I was inside, so I wondered about its relevance!

Weirdly, they have removed some of the artefacts and some are just wrapped in plastic in the rooms, stating they are to be moved for the new museum. They seemed to have wrapped them, delayed the opening and now will leave them wrapped, for over a year, denying visibility – bad planning!

The Museum is on two levels, the bottom being mainly statues and tombs but there is no indications as to which way to walk when you enter, I did the following walk and realised it is probably the best one to see it all.

On entry, go to the right hand side, along a wide aisle, looking at the mainly sarcophagi till you reach the end,

Then turn left, go along the aisle for the whole length of the building. Here are tombstones, statues, wall reliefs and ceremonial artefacts. At the end of this aisle turn left so you are basically taking a trail round the perimeter of this half of the building.

Then turn left again further along and see the magnificent sphinx’s and wall artefacts.

You then turn left, yet again and effectively come back on yourself, walking down a parallel walkway and into the centre display/well area, back to the front door.

Turn right and now keep walking the aisle and taking each right turn. Thus you will have effectively walked that whole side of the Museum. You’ll arrive at the ground floor exit area, opposite the stairs – do not exit, as there is more to see upstairs!

You have effectively walked an elongated S shape but have seen all the ground floor. You will get lost if not and miss big areas of the ground floor. From here there are stairs up, so take them and the second floor is basically one huge cicle around the perimer with a few internal rooms.

Do not miss the Tutankamen exhibition near the stairs and the amazing famous headpiece. There are no pics allowed and the guard here is eagle-eyed and harsh to offenders in his bellowing of “no photos”.

Walk around the perimeter and see the items recovered from tombs and the amazingly well preserved items. There is a plethora of caskets for the dead here, including some that have been opened to reveal the mummy inside!

At the opposite corners of this floor are the mummy rooms. This is an optional additional charge on your ticket, so ensure you ask and get this, if you want to see these. The rooms are filled with corpses and for me it was bit macabre to see this number of mummies (about 20) and the condition that some are in. On some of the mummies the hair looks like it is still alive.

There was one guard for the two chambers here and although I heard him admonishing people who tried to take pics (there are signs saying no photos) he was the only one here. When he left that chamber to go to the other one at the other end of the hall. people then took pics freely.

Use the system, this is often common here – no photos allowed signs but enforced haphazardly! In the second room there wasn’t even a guard to check that I had paid the extra as I walked in.

I found the museum more interesting than I imagined and it had more to see with a good variety of artefacts, tombs, statues, tablets, hieroglyphic walls, headpieces, sarcophagi, religious items etc. I was actually impressed. Definitely worth the visit and if you are into Ancient Egyptian artefacts it is invaluable.

From here I caught a taxi, and endured another annoying scam attempt. I agreed the price and he said he knew where the famous Mosque was I wanted to go to and we set off. I realised he was going the wrong way (checked on the Sat Nav on my phone), and told him so. He seemed confused and looked at it and corrected himself.

I soon realised he was trying to take a longer route, why I was unsure as we had agreed a price. Maybe he really did not have a good sense of direction, so I started to guide him along the correct streets. He almost missed it several turnings but I caught hime in time to tell him where to trn. He kept asking me for directions and I used the Sat Nav again to show him.

At the end of the journey I showed him where to pull over as he didn’t know where. He then said as the traffic was busy (it is always busy in Cairo and was no different to normal), he wanted triple the original price. Annoyed I said no, as we had agreed a price. I also pointed out that he got lost and I helped him on my Satnav – for no charge- and he was getting the original price.

He argued and I did what you always have to do eventually – give them the agreed original price and walk away despite their shouting …. hate that but you get used to the attempts to be ripped off !

Mosque of Muhammad Ali, Cairo.

This 19th Century mosque is built inside the high fortified Citadel of Salah din Ayyubi, who fortified much of old Cairo. Its design is based on the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, (which coincidently I was to visit in 2 weeks time – so I can compare !).

Post script – after visiting the Blue Mosque in Istanbul now, I can repoty it is remarkably similar

Entrance is via the Citadel entrance which you have to pay to get in at a massively overcrowded covered entrance area so be prepared to queue – (queue = fight in a scrum !) to get through the fortified gateway. Its beige brickwork compliments the adjacent beige fortress towers, walls and fortified buildings.

Walking through the big Citadel grounds you can see over Cairo from some height and the Mosque is set on a plateau along a wide road. The area contains a smaller mosque, museums, admin buildings and various out-buildings associated with its past as a fortified Citadel overlooking the city.

The entrance to the Mosque is through a central doorway facing you but the better entrance is via the courtyard to the right as here also you see not only the lovely colonnaded area and tomb but there are racks to place your shoes on – remember to take them off before entry into any Mosque.

The interior has stained glass windows, with enormous circles of lanterns in concentric patterns that in themselves are a delight. Muhammad Ali Pasha, who was ruler of Egypt and Sudan and regarded as the founder of modern day Egypt, is buried here in a tomb carved from Italian Carrara marble.

Outside the gardens were surprisingly bare and somewhat unkept, which I found unusual for a Mosque.

The nearby citadel walls gave magnificent views over Cairo and also showed the smog problem the city is suffering from. There are many walks and good photo opportunities around this area to see the old prison cells, the outbuildings and storage houses of the Citadel and even separate Police and Military Museums.

Funny story – me and my scary taxi ride in Cairo!

Taxi back from here was a scream – literally I wanted to scream in fear a couple of times!

I look back now and laugh but at the time was quite concerned …….best put it down to experience …..commentary follows.

I walked up to the nearby taxi rank and agreed a price with the taxi driver and got in …..no seatbelts – not compulsory here.

He drove at 80 kph down a broken, potholed, dual carriageway that turned into a busted up motorway full of garbage, walls that had fallen onto the carriageway n some dead sheep on the side. We went past a jogger running in the inside lane, missed a woman in a hijab trying to cross these 6 lanes with a basket on her head and swerved violently to overtake and missed hitting cars by centimetres.

He even wound down my side of the window to yell obscenities at a nearby driver for his cheek to cut him up, and then did the same back…. dangerously! I was temporarily deafened by his shouting at the other driver.

I was scared at the attention he was giving to his yelling and gesticulating at him, rather than focus on the road while driving at 80 kph!

He lit up a cigarette, taking both hands off the wheel, He was swerving potholes, overtaking on any side, beeping others to get out of the way and then just beeping …… for what I don’t know why, as I couldn’t see a reason. All other cars kept beeping each others incessantly.

He kept trying to talk to me in broken English that I didn’t understand, while not concentrating on the road. He just missed blind-siding a huge truck and then a kid playing football beside the motorway. He then turned the battered stereo on and started to sing loudly (wailing) to the Arab songs. He lit up anther cigarette and wound my window up, that I had lowered to get air due to his smoking, to stop the draught affecting his smoking,

I was spluttering from the cigarette fumes in the now sealed-air car and wound down the window again. He was now pointing out a nearby cemetery – why I don’t know (and I felt I was gonna be in there soon !).

He swerved to miss the camel now walking on the motorway, turned off the motorway down a road, narrowly missing grazing donkeys and huge puddles , swerved left and arrived at my hotel…….. he was expecting a tip….. I was thankful I got away with my life. I gave him the money and got out quickly. I ran to the hotel to get to a place of sanity … I was quite shaken up!

Welcome to Cairo !

…. I actually thought about it all, when I calmed down and burst out laughing (or was I crying) and just thought that was a fabulous experience as I couldn’t have planned a worse journey if I had tried. It had been one hell of an experience to tell everyone …. but never again!

My thoughts on Cairo.

Truly, I can’t say Cairo impressed me. It’s one of the few places in the world that has left me with that feeling.

Don’t get me wrong- the Egyptian Museum is outstanding and as a non Ancient Egyptophile I spent longer in it that I frst thought I would as it was captivating. Those monuments and artefacts were 1000s of years old and so mystical to me. The headpiece of Tutankhamun was everything as imposing as I thought it would be.

The Citadel and Mosque were beautiful, real gems in the city and a fabulous area to walk around.

However, these were the only two things that were, effectively, worth seeing here for me. Admittedly I didn’t get to the old Coptic area and that may have been great (many reviews I read though said it was not so great). I am used to going to a city and seeing 6-7 fantastic sites and leaving, not having been able to see 4 others due to time constraints. Cairo was not that kind of a city.

The city, especially on the outskirts is pretty decrepit, Failing or non-existant infrastructure and dangerously thrown up buildings with no amenities were everywhere and an absolute eyesore. Garbage everywhere and don’t get me started on the smog due to the huge, constant traffic jams.

I’m glad I’ve seen it and it was a real experience but, for me, it did not live up to the charm and historical importance that I thought it would.

Have I got it wrong? Let me know if you disagree, I’d love to hear others’ perspectives and experiences.

Jan 2019.