Another morning, another meal looking out over the pyramids, hehe. Hopefully you are all okay with us showing this same view over and over again.

So, what to do today? Beyond the pyramids in Giza, we think we have to make our way to Cairo. So, let’s get ready and take a car to Cairo. We choose to go somewhere that we randomly found yesterday, the Museum of Muhammad Ali Palace!

So, very quickly, who was Prince Muhammad Ali Tewfik? He was the prince of Egypt who lived from 1875-1955. Upon the death of King Fuad I in 1936 he served as chief regent until King Farouk came of age. His possibility of becoming king of Egypt ended when King Farouk had a son. After the revolution of 1953 Prince Muhammed Ali left Egypt in exile to Switzerland where he lived until his death. It was said that he drew all of the plans for this palace by hand and he supervised the construction himself between 1903 and 1937. Let’s go take a look!

We walk in and it’s like a huge garden opens up in front of you. Very beautiful. So we walk in and decide to take the pathway to the left. The people we see ahead of us are all going this way, so it must be the way to go. We don’t only see trees and plants, there is also some fancy water fountains. Makes sense since this is a palace after all.

A little bit further along we come to this, the Residence Hall.

This is the oldest building in the complex and it was the main building for the Prince. The tower above the residence (hidden in the picture) allowed the Prince to see all of Cairo’s sights at the time. The building has many different rooms that were all listed on the outside of the building on a sign, but the best way to see the rooms is to actually enter the building. Although the building is nice from the outside, we were not prepared for what was waiting for us inside!

Wow. Just wow. The inside is all so fancy and different than what we are used to in a palace. We’ve been in Russian palaces and grown up with pictures of different European palaces, but this is super cool. And the above picture is just the entrance. Now… we have nothing else intelligent to say about the main building, so instead we will just share some more pictures.

Well….we usually try not to just do a photo dump on this site… but we couldn’t choose. All the rooms have their own characteristics and we wanted to capture (and show) them all! And you can clearly see that my travel partner continues to be obsessed with both doors and ceilings, haha. But, that’s that, we are done the main residence. We leave this beauty of a house behind and return to walking outside in the gardens.

Next up – the throne hall! The little sign said that Prince Mohamed Ali likely constructed this hall to make a statement to the ruling family that he was the only one to have the right to reign after his father khedive Tawfik and his brother Abbas Helmi the second. This throne hall was built in the “Kiosk” style to resemble the style from the Bosphorus banks in Turkey.

Along the sides you have paintings of the natural landscapes of Egypt and members of the Mohamed Ali family. And of course the throne is at the very end of the throne hall.

You can then exit this hall and go above it on the second floor. Upstairs there are places to sit, relax, and overlook the Nile. Quite a way to relax!

After the throne hall we walk just a tiny bit further is the private museum. Here there are pieces acquired or gifted to the family. The building itself was pretty cool and there were several different little things that were on display in the museum.

Although there were many items on display, the one we liked the most was this table. Not only because it is pretty, but also because this actually comes from a seizure that was trying to be smuggled out of the country. That is the other category of things on display, seized goods. Quite the little museum, and it definitely does not take 4+ hours like all of the other museums we’ve visited in Cairo, hehe.

Now, after that quick visit we start walking towards the entrance again. Along the way we take in more of the garden. A little interesting thing we noticed… many of the paths went through the garden were roped off. To us this meant that they were off limits… but there were many people walking along the paths much further down. We weren’t crazy enough to jump the barriers just in case, but some of the gardens seemed like they would have been pretty nice to walk through.

Well, we’re back at the entrance and now we’re going towards the right. We’re not done yet! It couldn’t be that quick, right? We walk along and take in this tall clock tower. This tower is built in the style of minarets from Morocco and Andalusia. An interesting feature is that the hands of the clock are actually made to look like a snakes. We’re not sure if you can make that out on the below picture or not.

Then we continue to the end of the area that we are allowed to visit and end up in another small hall that we assume is used to show the hunting prowess of the Prince. We’re not sure though as we didn’t notice any signs.

And now it is time to visit our last location at the museum, the mosque. With an exterior like this, of course we had to enter. (Notice the Shorfat in the form of cobras along the outside).

The interior did not disappoint either. Another few pictures just to show you what we saw. Inside you can see that the walls are decorated in the form of carpets in different styles, the windows are arches with various architectural ornaments around them, plus there are numerous marble star dishes made in the Mamluk style as well. Finally notice the ceiling and the Mihrab which is adapted from “al-Geyoushy” tombstone style. All very pretty.

The intricate and beautiful door of the mosque is the perfect picture to end our visit to the Museum of Muhammad Ali Palace with. We exit the museum grounds, turn to the right, and are immediately crossing over the Nile. This is the exact crossing we did yesterday while walking to here from the nilometer. Of course we stop again to take a good look at the Nile.

This also helps to highlight the location of the museum. The palace grounds are directly on the banks of the river. We suppose that waterfront property has always been popular. But that’s enough standing around, we have other things to see! We look at the map and find the nearest metro station, which is very close. We only need to walk about three blocks on the exact road that we used to cross the Nile and then we are at El Sayeda Zeinab metro station, along with all of these people.

Both days that we have been in the area it has been filled with people, but it makes sense because it is surrounded by hospitals, some of them belonging the the Cairo University. And as if a city with a metro population of over 22 million people would ever feel empty, haha. Like the true locals we are (not) we looked at the metro map and saw that we had to switch at Nasser station and then continue on till we reached our destination at Bab El Shaariya. Just like the other night, the metro was nice and easy. We were at our station in no time. And Cairo really knows how to show off their metro stations that are close to touristic areas (or maybe it’s all of them and we were only in touristic areas, hehe).

Remember how we said we were locals up a few lines ago? Well, we got too confident. We left the metro station and started confidently walking towards our destination, only to quickly realize we were walking in the complete opposite direction and turn around, haha. Luckily I am not the one that is in charge of the map or my travel partner wouldn’t let me live it down!

Now that we’re on the right track we start walking. We’re in a regular neighbourhood just walking around and looking at everything until we make it to the street we wanted to make it to and we turn right. (Little did we know at the time that if we turned left and walked a bit farther we would have seen a gigantic mosque, but alas, we didn’t know). We start walking and are immediately drawn into the surrounding architecture. Yesterday we visited Coptic Cairo, today we say welcome to Islamic Cairo!

The street is quite busy, many people walking this way and that. Surprisingly (for us) we would not say that there are many foreign tourists, at least not as many as we would expect. But, let’s begin our tour! We keep repeating this almost daily, but we are not experts on anything, so without the help of explanatory signs we will just provide the names of what we see. Fair enough? We have no other option, so hopefully it is fair! Haha. First up? The Mosque of Al Aqmar (519 AH / 1125 CE).

Next up? Al Mansour Qalawun Complex. This one is HUGE and you could go inside. The complex is so big that we didn’t have a good option to make it all fit in one picture.

Just out of reach of the picture, on the left, is the entrance to the complex.

Obviously we go inside and we are super excited to look around! We have no further explanations, so instead, here are some pictures!

After taking these pictures we wanted to get right into the mihrab to get a nice picture of the top of it. But, just as we were doing that we noticed that the group of young people that are in the middle of the third picture above were looking at us and talking among themselves. We didn’t think anything of it, we just continued looking at everything around the complex. But just as we took the below picture, one of them approached us.

One of them asked our name, so we told them. But there was a bit of a language barrier so they weren’t sure what we meant, probably because they had not heard a name like ours before, haha. We confirmed to them that that was indeed my travel partner’s name by saying “ismii” (اسمي) as we had learned with Duolingo, haha. They enjoyed the fact we knew one Arabic word, haha. Then one of the girls tried speaking to us more, but it was not working because neither of us speaks Arabic and she didn’t speak English. One of the guys tried to help us out a bit, but we still weren’t 100% sure what they were asking us. Then we were absolutely saved. One of the girls that had been taking pictures a bit further away approached us to see what was going on, and she offered to translate for us. She spoke perfect English so we were actually able to speak with the group a lot! It wouldn’t have been possible without our new friend, Arwa.

The very first question was what we thought of Egypt. Classic question. We told them honestly what we thought and the problems we had had with our hotel. Arwa seemed quite annoyed and said that that wasn’t Egypt, they are just people trying to rip off tourists and not to judge Egypt because of them. We actually talked to the group for quite a long time. Some of them were from Cairo while others were from other Egyptian cities. They had been at a party and were now touring around the city. They were all university aged, but we only remember what two of them were studying, Islamic studies and agricultural studies. It was actually very fun to talk to them, and it gave us a great interaction with Egyptians, proving that Arwa was right, not all Egyptians were like the guys from our hotel, pfew. Haha. (We never actually thought that all Egyptians were like them, for the record!) After talking to them for a while some wanted our contact information, some wanted to take pictures with either me or my travel partner, and that’s when we took the pictures above and below. The one below shows the three people we talked with the most while we were there with the group.

Well, some of them started to leave, and we had to get moving as well. We asked them if they knew how to get to our main goal for the day, but none of them had been there before and they hadn’t heard of it. So, we said our goodbyes and went on our way! Very nice to meet all of them!

As we’re leaving the complex one of the guys at the entrance stops us and asks where we’re going. We said we were leaving. He asked if we had seen everything. We said we didn’t have a clue, we had just walked around, haha. He told us to follow him, so, of course we did. Back into the complex we go! Haha. We again saw the people we had just been talking to, and they asked us why we were back. We told them and they asked for a few more pictures before we kept going with the attendant. He took us through a door we thought we weren’t allowed going through and saw a few more areas of the complex!

But now we’re actually done. We leave and take a few pictures outside of the complex (which we’ve already show you, just out of order, hehe). We again run into the people we had met, but this time we don’t talk, we both continue on our way.

Our main goal today is going to Al Azhar again, but this time we want to be able to enter the mosque. You didn’t think that we would be happy with just looking from the outside a few nights ago, did you? Of course not. So we continue to walk through the streets of Islamic Cairo until we make it back to the underground passage we had shown you the other night. Now something weird happened… we didn’t take any pictures around here. We don’t have pictures of the streets, we don’t have pictures of the underground passage (just a regular underground passage), and we don’t have pictures of the outside of the mosque. This last one is the only one that makes sense because as we approached Al Azhar the prayer had just finished and there were many people leaving the mosque. We didn’t really want to take pictures of all of them. So instead we just walk straight inside and see this:

Wow! The centre of the mosque is quite big and very beautiful. And as you can see it is pretty empty. We have all the time we could ask for to just take it all in, wow. It’s so beautiful and calming. All of the people, cars/traffic, and everything of a 22 million plus city just disappears in here which is pretty impressive.

So, the small bit of information we learn while here is that Al Azhar Mosque was founded by Prince Taj-Aldin ElShubaki in 818 CE during the Mamluk Period. We obviously understand that this was many, many years ago, but a fact that jumped out to us even more is that this would mean that this mosque was built only 208 years after the start of Islam with the first revelation to the Prophet Muhammad in the year 610 or it could be considered only 196 years after the start of Islam from the hijra in the year 622 Either way, wow.

Let’s explore! We just stay in this central area for a while people watching. We are trying to determine where we can and cannot go. And once we start moving around we look at other people to see what we can and cannot take pictures of. Throughout this trip we have seen various interpretations of the rules inside of mosques, so a good tip is to watch what others are doing. Some mosques we were in encouraged us to take pictures of everything, others only wanted a few pictures, some didn’t want any, and still others didn’t accept tourists, so always be aware and follow the rules. Also, same as at all mosques, be aware of your dress and dress appropriately. (This isn’t just for mosques, we were also expected to dress appropriately while visiting Coptic Cairo). But with all of our observations out of the way, let’s show you a bit of the mosque!

We can imagine that this would have been full a few minutes ago as the call to prayer had rung out through Cairo. This is where all of the people we saw exiting the mosque as we were entering would have been. Throughout this main hall you could see people reading the Quran and doing their prayers as well.

We continue walking around, and luckily before entering anywhere we wait and observe. Why luckily? Because we almost entered the section that is for women only and because we almost went into what looked like a library section. We’re pretty sure that we may have been able to enter the library, but we didn’t notice anyone else going in there, so best to play it safe. Instead we just stay in the middle looking around in awe at everything.

Even though we really find this mosque beautiful, we can’t stay here forever. So we take the last pictures of the entrance and the exit to Al Azhar Mosque. Well worth the visit and highly recommended!

Well, we can’t just leave it there. Of course we took a closer look at the minaret, and that will be the last picture we show you of Al Azhar. We actually really love geometric patterns, which is why we focus on it so much throughout the Islamic architecture that we have seen during our trip. We hope that you enjoy it as well!

We step outside by the underground passage and we have to decide what to do next. This was our main goal for the day, so now that that is accomplished anything extra is just a bonus. So we take a minute to investigate what is around us. While my partner considers his options, I tell him to show you another mosque.

There are mosques pretty much in every direction that you look, which means that we have a lot of choices! But, we’re going to try this one…

In all honesty, this picture was taken after our visit. Although this mosque is directly beside Al Azhar (you can see a minaret on the left), we didn’t think much of it because you can’t really even tell that it is a mosque from down here. We honestly went up the front steps only to take a picture of the square below, look at Al Azhar from that new level, and only looked inside because there was a sign indicating that this was a mosque.

Well, little did we know that we were about to enter the Mohammed Bek Abo Alzahab complex, haha. As we were looking at the sign with the prices on it (40 LE = ~ $1) a man came out and told us to enter the complex/mosque. Of course we followed, haha. And thankfully we did. Wow. (We have said wow a lot today, hehe).

This is the HUGE ceiling that greeted us in our first room. Absolutely huge and so beautiful. We literally both just stared up at it. Incredible. It’s enough to get lost in. But that wasn’t it. The man then led us up some extremely steep steps motioning at us to be careful going up. We went up to a second level where we were even closer to the ceiling, but our attention was drawn to this as well.

Okay, this mosque is just showing off at this point. And just when you think to yourself “wow, this is crazy” the man motions for you to follow him again because there is more. We continue up the steep staircase and then we exit onto the rooftop of the mosque. Who would have thought that we would be on the roof of a mosque today? Definitely not us, but here we are.

Here you can see the place where the dome is located, other smaller domes coming out of the roof all around us, and our guide walking away from us, haha. It must be something so regular for him, but we were just standing there looking everywhere over the city. Where we came out of you couldn’t really see too much because of the other buildings around you, but once we walked to the front you had a bit of a more open view. But, before we get ahead of ourselves, you can also see something just poking out of the left side of the above picture. We weren’t exactly sure what it would be… but we took a picture of it anyway. We figured we would take a picture and figure it out after, but that never happened, haha.

We took the picture thinking that it could be mathematical or astronomical, especially since astronomy plays a big roll in Islam with the sighting and prediction of the different phases of the moon (remember it is a lunar calendar). We honestly just thought it looked cool. But if you can make out what it is, we would love to know. Some information from it: there are 12 different numbers listed along the outermost area and these are divided into two mirror images. The numbers are (from the top left corner around counterclockwise) 90, 75, 60, 45, 30, 15, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, and 90. Inside the section for 15 it says 5 and 10. Anyway…. we follow the man to the front of the mosque.

He motioned for us not to go too close to the edge, we weren’t planning on it anyway. But it was super cool to be up here. We wonder if this is part of the regular tour, haha. The entire time we were here (maybe 30 minutes) we didn’t see a single other person enter the mosque. We take our last picture, and then it is back down the steep, steep steps. Again our guide motions for us to watch our step.

Then it was back through the domed room, which we believe is the actual mosque within the complex. Makes sense to us since we see the mihrab in the below picture.

We could stay here a while… but our guide has seen this hundreds of times (if not thousands) and motions for us to keep following him. We go out and go around the back of the mosque. Here he shows us other places of the complex and through a translator app tells us that there is a school here as well.

Well, that was definitely worth the visit. So now you know, just beside Al Azhar is the Mohammed Bek Abo Alzahab complex and it is well worth the visit. Especially if you get a tour like we did. It makes it feel like it was a private tour that not everyone gets, haha. So special! Hehe.

Now, the other night we were here we saw another mosque that we thought that we should get a better look at. We were also able to see it from the roof of this mosque, so we know where to go. We go through the underground pathway to cross the busy street, and in no time we’re in front of the Hussein Mosque.

To get here we had to walk past security with a tour group that was going back to their bus because this area is only used to pick up and drop off passengers, but we didnt see another opportunity or angle to get this picture, and it is key, haha. We wouldn’t recommend copying us, but we did what we had to do for the picture, haha. We just hope that you understand why we just had to have this picture. If not, look at it again and think back to our time in Saudi Arabia. If still no, we took this picture because the Hussein Mosque reminded us of the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah because of the three sunshades in front of the mosque. We had never seen these before the Prophet’s Mosque and here they are again, haha.

We leave this spot and walk back through the crowded streets towards the entrance to the mosque. The streets are very busy here, like VERY busy. There are cafes/restaurants with people eating in their “patios” and there are a lot of vendors selling pretty much anything you can think of. And there are also foreign tourists around this area. We wade through the crowds until we get to the mosque entrance. Again we stand by and just observe people going into the mosque to make sure we have the proper etiquette. After watching a few people we know what to do and enter. Welcome inside the Hussein Mosque.

You can see that this main hall is quite big and very pretty. At the front there was someone that may have been the imam that was still speaking with people who had come to the mosque. We were then intrigued that there were a lot of people entering another room of the mosque. We had zero clue what it could be. Again, we just waited a while to watch how people entered and exited. Once we finally had observed long enough and realized that anyone could enter, we went in as well.

Now, walking in we had no clue what we would see in this separate room. Inside, we still weren’t sure, but we could tell that it was a spiritual moment, that much was clear.

Again, we observe and many people had their phones out for pictures and recordings, so we thought we could do the same. Later on we looked it up online and found many pictures, so there must not be any rules against it, thankfully. Inside this room was incredible. Surrounding this mausoleum were many, many men who would touch the mausoleum, take pictures and videos of them touching it, but the best part was the singing. There were many men that were all singing while in that room. It was really moving.

The reason that this is such a spiritual place is that you are looking at the mausoleum of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib and the Prophet’s daughter Fatima. Well, Husayn ibn Ali did not live in Cairo, so what happened? After a bit of research we learned that he is actually buried in Karbala, close to Baghdad. However, what is said to be in this mausoleum is Husayn’s head. This is one of various places that are said to contain Husayn’s head: here in Cairo, in Karbala with the rest of his body, an unknown place in Damascus, in Raqqa in Syria, among a few others. However, it is said that the ruler of Ashkelon, Sayf al-Mamlaka Tamim, moved Husayn ibn Ali’s head to Cairo in the year 1153 fearing the crusades. Other sources say that Husayn ibn Ali’s entire body was moved here. Without speaking Arabic to ask anyone, we are unsure and are just presenting what we have been able to discover while doing some “research” online.

But this is not the only holy place in this mosque. Just to the right of us is a door with both gold and silver leading to a crypt. What is contained here? Nothing less than objects that had been owned by the Prophet Muhammad. These objects are a piece of cloth that formed a part of a linen cloak that he had worn, a lantern containing four strands of the Prophet’s hair, kohl made of copper that the Prophet had owned, a staff that he owned when he entered Makkah, and a sword that was a gift to the Prophet. It also contains a Quran written by Ali inb Abi Talib (the father of Husayn ibn Ali). No wonder this is such a spiritual place and everyone was so moved.

But… we must make a small comment. Remember, we are no scholars. But… when visiting Madinah there were signs around the burial sites of the Prophet’s companions telling you that you were not to visit their graves and ask for blessings. If you have been following our travels, you may remember us remarking about the rules to visit cemeteries while we visited Madinah. It seems that the interpretation is different at this particular mosque in Cairo, at least that’s what it looks like to us. After discussing with some people and doing a bit more research it seems to be the difference between Sunni-Islam (the majority of Saudi Arabia) and Shiaa-Islam (what this mosque is associated with). To be clear, we are just making an observation of what we have noticed throughout our travels.

But with that, it is time to leave. We go back out into the alleyways of Islamic Cairo and walk back towards where we started. This is what we’re walking through. There are the main arteries that are a little wider throughout this neighbourhood, but on either side of these main arteries the streets/alleyways get much narrower with lots of people and lots of things for sale. Not a bad place to try to look for some gifts or souvenirs!

But then we arrive at the main artery that we were walking on earlier, and we take a few pictures as we walk around all of these historic buildings.

Well, after a bit of a photo dump, we are done with the northern side of this neighbourhood (if only we had walked 100 metres further north…) and we have to cross the busy road through a fence with a hole in it (many people did this, so it was fine), and then we enter the part of the neighbourhood we had already visited at night, let’s see what the neighbourhood is like during the day!

Well, even during the day the streets are still pretty full with people shopping. And again we will make the same comment we have already made… but this neighbourhood is filled with people that do not appear to be tourists. So you know that the prices must be fair, even though there are probably a few people that markup the prices once they realize that you are a tourist. But, that’s where you have to prove your worth with your bargaining skills, haha. Maybe we should test ours out in this neighbourhood… but a little later. First we have to walk through the neighbourhood. And we again pass by this building that we aren’t 100% sure about the name… but the map calls it Sabil Muhammad Ali Pasha.

Not much different in the day than in the night, haha. We continue until we are just outside of the Mosque of Sultan al-Muayyad pointing towards Bad Zuweila. Again you can see all of the things that are on sale, with many of them being lanterns of different kinds.

We continue just past the doorway and keep walking in that direction. Now it is our turn to practice our bargaining skills, hehe. This neighbourhood is filled with clothes, cloths, and anything textile related. Definitely worth a stop if you want a nice gift from Egypt. Here we just observed stalls from outside until we decided what we wanted. We entered and started asking a ton of questions about colours, styles, and everything else you can think of. They were showing us this and that until we were happy. Then came the bargaining. The prices were already beyond fair, so the only thing we bargained for was getting a discount for buying multiple things from them and because we were starting to run low on Egyptian pounds… so we couldn’t overspend, haha. But, I think we were both happy in the end!

Finally we decide it is time to get going back towards the hotel. We turn around and start exiting.. but then realize that there’s another open mosque. Do you think my travel partner is able to skip over it? Not a chance, in we go.

This is Al-Salih Tala’i Mosque. Although we didn’t take any pictures inside, this is one of the only remaining religious buildings that dates back to the Fatimid period of Cairo. It was built in 1160 by the Fatimid vizier Al-Salih Tala’i’.

But now we really leave. We take a picture of Bab Zuweila and then turn left to start walking back towards areas that we recognize more and that we think (without any basis) that it will be easier to get a car back towards our hotel from.

Now we walk back the exact route that we took the other day to get here, so once again we pass by the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. It looks a little different in the daylight, and you can better make out the wide street that we have to navigate across. It wasn’t as busy as the other night though, thankfully, haha.

We again walk by the Abdeen Palace Museum and the park in front of it. Then we continue through some residential neighbourhoods. Again, we felt very safe walking around these neighbourhoods, but we were still always vigilant as in any place we have been. Eventually we start to arrive closer and closer to the centre of Cairo, and we are getting tired. But… now we will give you a bit of information which we had not yet told you, today is our last full day in Egypt. So, even though we are both getting tired, we know we won’t be seeing Cairo again for quite some time. In an effort to soak it all in my travel partner just keeps on walking. We walk around some neighbourhoods, walk here and there, but eventually we obviously return to Tahrir Square. How could we not?

But, if it is our last night here, how could we not just walk a tiiiiiiiny bit further (relative to what we have already walked) and go and visit the Nile? We couldn’t come up with a good reason not to visit the Nile one last time, so of course that’s where we ended up, hehe.

And with that, our time in Cairo has come to an end. We fully enjoyed our time, but we have to get back to our hotel to both rest and pack! We get our car and start driving back to Giza. My partner tells me that he carried me around for over 15 kilometres since we got off at the metro to visit Islamic Cairo, haha. I remind him that it was his own choice and he better not complain, hehe. We get back to the hotel and grab our last supper in Egypt.

We usually show you the food, say good night, and that’s the end of that. But not tonight! Haha. Tonight we make this already long post just a little bit longer.

After we eat a bit and sit back and relax my partner has a plan. We will go onto the rooftop to take the last few pictures of “Egypt at night.” Of course I don’t complain and we go upstairs. First I ask for a picture looking over Giza at night, but the last picture we take is of course looking out over the pyramids. How could it not be? You can even make out a few stars above them. What a view! Good night from Giza!