Alright, everyone knows that Egypt has the pyramids, but that’s not the only thing that there is to see in Egypt. So, after two days of visiting the pyramids, let’s head into actual Cairo. Although all of the posts have so far been titled “Cairo,” we’ve actually been in Giza. But today we hope to show you a bit of the actual Cairo. So, we wake up and go upstairs to eat our breakfast while looking over the pyramids.
At breakfast we find ourselves with two Peruvian ladies and my partner speaks to them quite a bit. They swap travel stories with my partner, and they tell us that we should use Uber while in Egypt. They took it from the airport to our hotel and they paid much less than our hotel charged us. Good to know! After talking for a while, we excuse ourselves to be able to go and get ready. We’re a little later than would have been ideal, but that’s fine, we don’t always have to be go, go, go, hehe. My travel partner gets ready and we head on out. We do as the ladies told us, and we’re quickly on our way towards Cairo! Exciting!
Luckily it’s the middle of the day and we can see everything around the highway. Much better than the darkness that greeted us from the airport a few nights ago. And, with this daylight we can make our first sighting of…
The Nile! We’re obviously driving by so we can only manage to get this quick picture. We’re both just sitting in the back of the car with our mouths wide open. So, so cool. We know it’s not much to look at in the picture, but we hope to get you (and us) a better look at the Nile in the near future. But not right now, we continue onward. Our driver was great, he even realized that my partner was filming the landscape from the backseat, so he moved the car over to allow for a better view. Very much appreciated!
A few minutes later and we make it to our goal for the day.
As with the pyramids, there are two separate prices for Egyptians and non-Egyptians. For us it is 240 EGP (~$10), plus a bit extra if you want to take pictures with an actual camera. We will tell you from the start, well worth it. Although we must tell you that this museum may not exist for much longer as there is a new museum being planned in Giza where many of these artifacts will end up. But for now, join us as we explore the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization!
We enter and we immediately see what we came for.
But, that will have to wait. We know, we teased Ancient Egypt, and then pulled the rug from under you. And the word “rug” is pretty apt because we are entering the exhibit of Egyptian textiles. Maybe you know about Egyptian textiles already, but all that we can come up with as we enter this exhibit is that Egyptian cotton is known around the world for being great. Let’s see what else we can learn.
Well, let’s start from the start. The first garment we see is this pleated dress. It is from the Old Kingdom, from the 6th Dynasty. not a bad way to start our visit.
Well, our first example wasn’t very colourful, but we learn that that is not always the case. The ancient Egyptians were skilled at dyeing their garments as they had discovered mordants since before the dynastic period. These mordants allowed them to bind the dyes they produced to their fabrics, allowing for better and longer lasting dyes. Within the exhibits they explained how these dyes were made using the natural resources of Egypt such as insects or shellfish for their reds, quartz or copper-containing glass for their blues, and saffron stigmas for their yellows. Even though they were garment experts, it’s hard to expect that all of these dyes survives all of these years. Especially when you consider one of our favourite facts: Cleopatra was alive (69-30 BCE) closer to the present day than to the completion of the Great Pyramid (~2560 BCE). Crazy fact, and explains why not all garments kept their colour all these years later.
Then there is this.
Most of you, dear readers, have probably heard of King Tutankhamun, the ruler of the New Kingdom from 1332 – 1322 BCE. Well, this is one of the 145 loincloths that were found in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings in present day Luxor. Super cool to see something related to this legendary ruler.
And then we make a big leap in time to the Roman Period of Egypt between the years of 30 BCE to 395 CE. We found this funerary shroud very interesting because it shows that although this was when Egypt was under Roman rule, they did not convert to Roman theology. We say this because the below shroud depicts the deceased in the form of Osiris (god of the dead and resurrection) with Anubis (jackal-headed god of death and mummification) below him.
Next we jump into the Byzantine Period (beginning in 330 CE), where we meet the Egyptian Copts.
Please allow us to provide an extremely short and unfair context in case you are not familiar with the Egyptian Copts. We hope not to insult you/anyone with our lack of in-depth information… But… You probably noticed that the above picture has Christian iconography. But, how could that be when so many people around the world associate Egypt with Islam? Well, if you have been following our Middle East trip so far you may remember that we learned that Islam began around 610 CE, meaning that the Byzantine Period, and the Egyptian Copts within it, pre-date Islam. This ethno-religious group continues to account for 5-15% of the Egyptian population in modern-day Egypt. And that is why there is Christian iconography above. (We hope to actually visit Coptic sites while in Egypt, and if we do we will try to show more about them and hopefully provide a better history for our dear readers).
Well, after the Byzantine Period comes the Fatimid Period (969-1171 CE). This is after the Muslim conquest of Egypt and the rulers are now caliphs. Their textile industry continues to grow where they produce silk textiles for the caliph and “regular” textiles begin to incorporate the names of the caliphs in Kufic script, geometric motifs, and animal/floral motifs. It is hard to see in this picture, but we believe all of these motifs are present in the below picture. Pretty cool!
We continue our exploration of Egypt through textiles by entering the Ottoman Period (1517-1808 CE). Here the exhibit draws our attention to the effect of the Silk Road on the textiles of Egypt. The southern portion of the Silk Road entered North Africa through Egypt, which allowed the eventual production of silks, which we also mentioned in the above Fatimid Period.
And now we enter into modern-day Egypt.
As we have seen in other museums, the traditional clothing varies based on geography. On the left we have the Siwa outfit and on the right the Oasis outfit. We weren’t too sure about the exact geographical difference though, as we believe that Siwa is an oasis. The signs explaining the outfits focused more on the actual textiles and stitching used rather than explaining why the outfits were practical in these geographies. If you know, we’d love to hear about it!
And now we approach one of the most famous Egyptian textiles, the Kiswah. The Kiswah is the black cloth that covers the Ka’aba in Makkah.
For many, many years it was Egypt that would produce the Kiswah and it would then be ceremoniously transported to Makkah (we learned about this at the Museum of Islamic Civilization in Sharjah, UAE). They did this for many years, although the production was eventually moved to Makkah in the 1960s. However, it is still a very celebrated part of both Egyptian and Islamic history. The above Kiswah has the words “In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Gracious. This holy curtain was renewed by the order of his majesty King Farouq I, King of Egypt, son of Fouad I, son of Ismail Pasha, son of Hajj Ibrahim Pasha 1359 ” inscribed on it, with 1359 AH corresponding to 1940 CE. We saw many people taking pictures in front of this.
But this nicely moves us upstairs in the exhibit hall to our next exhibit, the last King of Egypt. We will admit, we did not know that Egypt had been a monarchy in modern history. We only really found out when reading the sign for the above Kiswah. But then we saw the dress from the wedding of King Farouk and Queen Nariman. Wow.
Just so that you can understand how lavish it is… the dress was made in Paris by Germaine Liconte, who personally flew it to Cairo when it was completed. It is made of 30 metres of precious white satin studded with 25,000 diamonds, weighs 12 kg, and it took over 4,000 hours to make. Crazy! The wedding took place in 1951 and Queen Nariman was his second wife. Meaning that Queen Nariman would only sit on the throne for 14 months before King Farouk abdicated the throne following the 1952 revolution.
Well, the last thing we will show you are some doors. We always do this because we tried to learn some Arabic using Duolingo and many, many of the lessons focus on “Arab doors” and how pretty they are. So, naturally, we now notice doors as we travel around, haha. As you may have noticed from past posts, haha.
Well! That’s that. We finish the pre-exhibit, Egyptian textiles. Now it’s onto “the main event”. We could walk around the main floor of the museum looking at a bunch of different artifacts, but we just can’t put off going into this any longer!
Well, we are super, super excited. Unfortunately for you, you won’t get to see anything from within the exhibit because photography is not allowed. We obviously follow the rules, so you will just have to trust us that it was absolutely amazing.
So, you enter the gallery by going down a darker pathway. And then you are welcomed to the royal mummies. It is incredible! Here we learned a bit more about the actual mummification process. First, as you may know, all of the internal organs were removed. Although it wasn’t specified here, we know that these were usually put into canopic jars. The body was then desiccated over 70 days at which point the body was wrapped in bandages with interspersed amulets throughout this process. The mummies were then placed within sarcophagi. We use the plural because typically the sarcophagi were placed one inside of the other, with the innermost being the most ornate and the one we most associate with the word ‘sarcophagus’. We got to see many of these here. Incredibly impressive and beautiful.
But, why/how are they here? As you may remember, inside the pyramids at the Giza Plateau there wasn’t much to see. So, how did these survive? As you may know and assume, there were many grave robbers throughout history, including during Ancient Egypt itself. To combat this, priests would create secrete entrances to the pyramids and pathways that didn’t lead anywhere. However, this was not 100% successful, the pyramids were still looted. On top of that, once European countries started “exploring” Egypt they also looted many of the riches from Ancient Egypt (think of the British Museum). So, again, how did these survive? Well, here we must thank the priests of Ancient Egypt. They were aware of grave robbers, and to protect the mummies that were buried within the pyramids they removed the tombs after completion. These priests moved the royal mummies into the surrounding cliffs of Deir el-Bahari in the 10th century BCE. These were only rediscovered in the late 1800s. One of the only tombs that actually contained a body in the Valley of the Kings was that of Amenhotep II. However, this tomb was found to also contain the bodies of other royals including Merenptah, Thutmose IV, Seti II, Ramesses IV, Ramesses V, and Ramesses VI. These mummies were all displayed together here for the first time. We were also able to see their grave goods which just adds to the amazing exhibit. Definitely worth a visit, but we imagine that these will be moved to the new museum, so double check where these mummies are located if you visit Cairo!
Now that we have explored something amazing without being able to show you, we will now head up to the main exhibition hall where we can take all kinds of pictures as we explore the history of Egypt.
Let’s start with the start, 35,000 years ago. These are some of the ancient artifacts that were found around Egypt, and similar tools have been found in ancient burial sites.
Next up, the Naqada culture. These potteries date back to different periods within the Naqada period which ranged from 3800 to 3050 BCE.
At this point it is important to point out that whenever people think of Egypt or Ancient Egypt, we think only of the pyramids. But, this region has a long and storied history both before and after the building of the pyramids. Although, no Egyptian museum would be complete without some of the artifacts that we more commonly think of.
(An aside, it seems that wherever we go we end up seeing people officially filming various things. Around the boat there was a guy that was being filmed by a full crew. They would ask everyone to move away from the exhibit, film, and then move on to another artifact in the museum. Looks like we’re always in the right place at the right time as we have seen this at a museum in Moscow, a music video in Vladivostok, a film set in Jeddah, and now, haha).
And, once again, the Egyptians are extremely against any of the theories of aliens building the pyramids. So much so that they proudly show the different tools that were used to complete some of their most storied constructions. Here they claim the plumb bob was one of the best tools that Ancient Egypt adopted because it could tell the straightness of walls. The importance of their architects is further demonstrated by one such architect, Senenmut, being immortalized in the statue in the middle of the next picture. Senenmut designed and oversaw the construction of Hatshepsut’s memorial temple at Deir el-Bahari during the New Kingdom (1550-1295 BCE).
And then we see one of the oldest statues of a sphinx in the world. This is from the Old Kingdom (~2700-2200 BCE). It depicts Queen Hetepheres II, the daughter of King Khufu.
And with all of the sarcophagi and mummies downstairs, we should also show you who protected them on their journey into the afterlife.
The above statues were discovered in the tomb of King Amenhotep II. The statues are for Wadjet – depicted as a cobra, Nekhbet – depicted as a vulture, Meretseger – depicted as a winged cobra, and Mehet-Weret and Hathor who are the goddesses of heaven – depicted as cows. These are some of the oldest goddesses of Ancient Egypt with these statues dating back to the New Kingdom (1550-1295 BCE).
Next up is something extremely rare, the only surviving example of a “tent” from Ancient Egypt. This example was discovered buried within a tomb in 1881 CE, but was likely made between 1046-1037 BCE. These tents were used for various purposes including while out on excursions (the way we would think of tents today) and as a tent where the purification rites were conducted in front of the tombs of nobles or wealthy people. Well, you can imagine that this must be the second case as it looks very fancy, and we were also able to take a look inside.
Well, we told you that it is likely from a noble person, so who could it be? This was made for the purification rites of Isetemkheb II who was the daughter of Masaherta, an army general and high priest of Amun. She was also the granddaughter of King Pinudjem I. However, we must point out that although this “tent” is for Princess Isetemkheb II, her coffin has never been found. So, inside there is the coffin of Princess Isetemkheb IV. Both very impressive.
Well, now we will move into a phase of more pictures and less explanations. First up, on the left we have a statue of King Merenptah and the goddess Mut (1295-1186 BCE) and on the right we have the inner coffin of Sennedjem with some depictions of the Book of the Dead found painted on it.
Next up we have the coffin of Nedjemankh. Look at just how impressive it is. It is made of gilded cartonnage that depicts funerary hymns from the Book of the Dead. It is supposed to be one of the masterpiece coffins from the Ptolemaic Period (305-30 BCE).
Here we will pause the pictures to make an interesting observation. As you probably have guessed, my travel partner sits and reads the majority (if not all) of the little signs explaining the exhibits. This way he can then pass on that knowledge to you, our dear readers. (My partner has always done this, readers or not). And on the exhibit of the coffin of Nedjemankh there was an interesting note on it. We bring it up because of what we said above of people looting the different tombs of the Kings. Well, this coffin had written under it “Repatriated from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York”. Very interesting. Many countries around the world have been fighting hard to bring back their historical pieces, and this seems to have been one such case that ended up returning home to Egypt! Cool!
And finally, three examples of the work from the ending of what we (untrained novices) would consider the end of Ancient Egypt.
Now we move into the Roman Period of Egypt where we can continue to see the ornate artistry of Egypt. Imagine, these were only found in 1989 in a pottery vessel that was hidden in the wall of a Roman fort. Imagine what other treasures are still out there waiting to be discovered!
Next up are the Egyptian Copts again. Here we show you a piece of textile again that shows some nature motifs (7th-9th century CE).
And we will quickly show you two more things from the Egyptian Copts. On the left, a deacon’s stole and on the right a part of a dome with religious artwork on it (6th-7th century CE). Notice how the stole resembles (to us at least) the clothing used within the Eastern Orthodox churches that we visited in Russia on our last World Cup trip.
Then we moved into the final area of the exhibition hall, architecture. Although there was a lot of information, we were drawn to one thing immediately. Not only because of the sheer size of this window, but also because it reminds us of the architecture we saw throughout historic Jeddah. You can see how architectural practices spread far and wide throughout the Islamic world.
The final bit of architecture we will show you is that of a Nubian house. The room that most drew our attention was this, a room where the Nubian’s displayed their dishes made of colourful palm fronds. Made for a pretty display.
Alright, we’re getting to the point where my partner is getting a lot of information thrown at him at once. There are just displays every which direction you look, and most have little signs detailing what the objects are. As you may have noticed, at the start we had lots of pictures per era and we tried to explain a lot of what we read, but that started to slow way down as we went along. But, we did check it all out! We saw many people come to the museum with guides and it felt like they walked in, stopped at three different stops, and then left the museum. Another reason why we enjoy traveling at our own pace.
Now we finish off the exhibition hall with a few quick pictures. The first, another demonstration of the different styles of traditional dress of Egypt.
A mosaic that comes out of the home of a wealthy man in the ancient city of Alexandria. It’s one of the oldest examples of a mosaic from Egypt (2nd century BCE).
A statue of Khonsu, the god of the moon. He was a symbol of youth, vitality, and vigour and was therefore usually associated with the reigning king. This particular statue seems to bear a resemblance to Tutankhamen, and must therefore be from his reign during the New Kingdom (1550-1295 BCE).
And now, we will end with what we have always talked about throughout our trip through the Middle East. We have always said that no self-respecting museum doesn’t have a Quran, and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization keeps with that trend.
Our final artifact is this Kiswa. And we’re sorry if we repeat ourselves a bit from above, but there was much more information at this Kiswa than at the other inside the textile section.
First off, the covering of the Holy Kaaba began during the rule of the Himyarite Kingdom (387-430 CE), which is before Islam. This tradition has continued since then until the present day. Although the color varied at the beginning of this practice, it has been made of black silk since the Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun (813-833 CE). During the reign of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq (we hope you remember that name from our time in Saudi Arabia) the Kiswa was made in Egypt, Damascus, and Yemen. However, you already know that Egypt was finally adopted as the sole producer of the Kiswa from the reign of Al-Malik as-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub (1240-1249 CE).
As we learned in Sharjah, the Kiswa used to be ceremoniously transported to Makkah by a grand procession called Al-Mahmal. This custom began during the rule of the Sultana Shajar al-Durr (1249-1250 CE). The entire procession was led the “camel of al-Mahmal” which carried an empty compartment on its back that had two silver boxes containing the Quran. The procession would head out to Makkah and deliver the Kiswa to the Prince of Makkah (before modern Saudi Arabia, we think) who would then drape the Kaaba in this new Kiswa. The old one would then be removed and brought back with the same procession. Once back in Egypt the old Kiswa would be cut up and handed out as blessings.
This particular Kiswa is part of the last one that Egypt sent to Makkah in 1961 CE during the reign of the president Gamal Abdel Nasser. As you may recall from above, the Kiswa is now made in Makkah itself.
And with that, we are done our time at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization! What a whirlwind tour through all of Egyptian history. A LOT has happened in Egypt, haha.
We take our last picture within the main hall to show the size of the museum. The top floor is where the majority of the artifacts are and the entrance you can see below me is where we entered to see the Pharaoh’s Golden Parade. We had an amazing time, and we hope you enjoyed reading about our visit as well.
We then sat for a second just to rest a bit and decide where to go next. We had wanted to go visit a second museum, but through a combination of leaving the hotel a bit later than ideal and spending a long time at this museum, we don’t think there’s much hope of us making it to a second museum. Instead we just sit and debate our next steps as we look over Ayn as-Sirah Lake.
Well, we decide and head out. It was a nice time at this museum, but we have to continue. As we wait for our ride we get these last pictures outside of the museum.
On our ride into the heart of Cairo we’re suddenly surprised by this. Who knows what it is? It doesn’t seem to have anyone paying any attention to it, but it is absolutely MASSIVE. We are guessing it is some king of aqueduct, and we know that the Egyptians were under Roman rule, and it looks exactly like a Roman aqueduct, so maybe? (We eventually found out it was the Cairo Citadel Aqueduct from a map from the museum). Let’s try to remember to come back to check this out!
Well, our goal was to make it to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. And we made it… but too late…
When doing our online research we saw many people saying that you could easily do both the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in a day, with time to spare. How? We spent 4 hours at the first museum… Unless you were there the minute it opened and then got here and immediately entered and didn’t take much time in this museum… mayyyyybe, ha. Or maybe it’s that “regular” people don’t have to read each little informative sign… maybe it’s that as well, haha.
But, now that you know that it’s closed, do we just get back into another vehicle and go back to our hotel because our day is done? No. Hopefully you could see that coming, ha. So where to go? Well, immediately next to this museum is Tahrir Square.
Now, we will give you an extremely limited history of Tahrir Square, and why you may recognize the name.
So, in 2011 there began a movement around the Arab world that would go on to become known as the Arab Spring. Although the exact reasons varied from country to country, they were generally (in a very reductive way) cost of living and anti-government protests. The Arab Spring also made it to Egypt, where many people came out onto the streets for a variety of reasons. Eventually, it was reported that the protests grew to more than one million people. These protests would eventually lead to the fall of the Hosni Mubarak government. When we arrived here we were confused because we don’t remember seeing this obelisk when the world news covered these events in 2011. The reason we didn’t remember it is because it did not exist. We could not find when exactly it was built, but the obelisk itself gives its own history as follows.
“The largest square in Cairo city in Egypt. Was named at the beginning as Ismaili square relative to Khedive Ismail. Then was changed to Tahrir Square to the liberation in the revolution of 1919, then the name was officially established in the revolution of the 23rd of July 1952. Tahrir square becomes the symbol of to the freedom and steadfastness of the Egyptian people. The square witnessed events of the revolution of 1919, the revolution of January 25 2011. It became a symbol of the Egyptians & their Freedom by June 30th Revolution.”
As you can tell, it is a very important square and it is supposed to be considered the heart of Cairo. We did cross the roundabout to get a better picture, as you can tell, but we were the only ones interested in this monument. Around the square there are a lot of police officers and private security as this is also the heart of the Egyptian government with many official buildings in the vicinity (at least until the new capital is built). And, just like in Giza, they want to ensure that tourists have a problem-free time while visiting Cairo/Egypt.
We take a few steps away and see this statue of Omar Makram. We took the picture because we thought it was a cool looking statue and that it must be important. All the information we could gather was that he was a political leader during the 1798 French Invasion of Egypt. This was when Napoleon invaded Egypt, and (we believe) around the time where it is rumoured that French troops did target practice with the nose of the Sphinx (may just be an urban legend, don’t take our word for it). So we were right, this statue was important. But that’s the end of our limited knowledge about this statue/person.
Well…. we’re in the heart of Cairo…. and what should that mean? The Nile should not be far away! just a few metres away from Tahrir Square we find the Nile. Our first real look at it. Wow, wow, wow. We’ve both grown up learning about the Nile, hearing about it, and knowing the fact that it is the longest river in the world, and we’re now looking at it. Such a crazy feeling.
We literally just stand here for a while taking it all in and then start taking a lot of pictures. We take a few selfies of each other, a few 360° pictures, and just stand there looking out over the Nile. Wow. We’re also not the only ones that are using the Nile as a backdrop for our pictures. The bridge we’re on is absolutely filled with people with huge cameras just offering everyone to take their picture on the bridge. We’re not exaggerating when we guess that there are probably 20 to 30 people (mostly young men) working with these cameras. They don’t bother us at all, they just stand and look at us to try to understand all of the different cameras that my travel partner pulls out to capture the moment, haha.
Well, we have absolutely zero plan now. So we will just walk, share some pictures, and try to make sense of what we see, haha. Well, from Tahrir Square we continue walking along the bridge until we make it to an island. On the map it says that it is called Zamalek. Who knows if that is accurate or not. But why do we come here? Only to be able to say to ourselves that we walked on an island in the Nile, hehe. No other reason whatsoever.
The first stop is the Museum of Egyptian Civilization. At least that’s what the building says! We assume that this used to be the museum. Before which of the two we saw today, we don’t know. But they’re obviously working on it. Maybe it will be repurposed for something else. It is in a prime location in the centre of Cairo.
Then we keep on walking. Again, we have no reason to keep walking other than to say that we walked across the entire width of the Nile in downtown Cairo, haha. So we cross a second bridge and enter the Giza Governorate. Now that we can say we have done that, we double back towards Tahrir Square. We take some quick pictures before the first bridge that we had crossed. We’re not 100% sure what this archway is for, but it is directly in front of the Palace of the Arts. And right next to it we find this statue of Saad Zaghloul.
To be honest, we had zero clue who we were looking at here. But, we knew he must be important to be in a roundabout that was directly connected to Tahrir Square, and we weren’t wrong about that. If you recall, the Tahrir Square monument spoke of the revolution of 1919. Well, Saad Zaghloul played a key role in that revolution. He led a disobedience campaign to achieve the independence of both Egypt and Sudan from British rule. Eventually Egypt did gain its independence and Saad Zaghloul was the prime minister of Egypt for close to a year in 1924. See? A big portion of this blog is seeing random things while walking around, thinking “hmm, that looks important,” and then finding out afterwards what exactly we looked at, haha. We swear we do actually plan our trips sometimes, haha.
We continue back onto the first bridge!
As you can see, the sun is starting to set. It looks awesome over the Nile. Crazy to think that we’re actually watching the sunset over one of the most important rivers of human history.
We have no idea what to do, so we just continue walking up along the Nile Corniche. Here we just walk, walk, and walk. Eventually we make it to an intersection below a second bridge to Zamalek Island. It is insane. Multiple roads cross this intersection, each of multiple lanes. No traffic lights. But it works, somehow. We needed to cross it, so we just followed some Egyptians. We’ve had to cross like this in the past on other trips, but we haven’t had to do it in a while. We couldn’t quite capture the chaos, but this is the best we came up with.
As we were standing taking this picture, cars are going around us every which way. And then we see a small accident. Only minor, but it just messed up the traffic that little bit more. A police officer appeared to help direct the traffic a bit, so that helped. Glad we don’t have to cross the entirety of this intersection!
We climb up the stairs and onto a second bridge towards Zamalek Island. We keep on walking, this time on the other side of the Nile. We walk until we both start getting a bit tired. Luckily we quickly reach the third bridge. My travel partner looks at the map and notices that this is the last bridge from the island back to Cairo proper. So we have no choice but to stop here, cross, and start walking back.
We know that many people have spoken badly about Egypt and that you should be careful about pickpockets, and we are always conscious of our surroundings, but we did not feel anything off at any point while walking around this part of Cairo. It was absolutely filled with young people enjoying themselves as we were. (Obviously judge for yourself and be careful wherever in the world you are, haha).
Well, now we’re back on the Cairo side, and walking back towards the Egyptian Museum, which means we are approaching that crazy intersection we talked about a few paragraphs ago, and we need to cross it. We obviously aren’t brave enough to cross through the exact centre, so we overshoot it a little bit where we only have to cross the straight road. It was pretty easy.
Now we’re skirting around the back of the museum, and there isn’t much space, but we manage. We’re coming up to where our adventures in central Cairo started, but we’re not quite ready to go back yet. We can manage to explore just a bit more, right? So we cross the street again and just follow a random road. We have absolutely zero idea where we are going or why, we are purely exploring.
It is absolutely packed with people. So, so many people everywhere you look. Of course it all makes sense, it is Thursday night and the weekend is just starting! Perfect time for us to explore! We just keep walking and see people getting food, shopping, and just enjoying themselves. We’re not sure if all of Cairo is like this or if this is a shopping district, but with a lot of people and a lot of stores, it is a happening place. Or, it may be one of various shopping districts. Cairo is a massive city after all. The last statistics we could find (2017) say that Cairo itself has close to 10 million people with over 22 million living in the Cairo metro area. So… Cairo is quite big, haha. No wonder there are so many people and cars!
But soon enough my partner is finally starting to get tired (we have walked over 9 km in downtown Cairo at this point) and decides to look on the map for the easiest way to get back to the hotel. What does he come up with? The metro. So we look for the nearest station to us, Nasser Station.
Let’s take you on a metro ride in Cairo. It’s like any other metro around the world…
And it is pretty busy. From Nasser Station we went one stop to Sadat Station where we had to change lines. Of course figuring this out was only possible with lots of help from the attendants.
Sadat station is directly below Tahrir Square, and as such it is nicely decorated. First up, we have a model of a statue of King Tuthomosis III (New Kingdom, 1590-1370 BCE) on the left, a model of a statue of a queen wearing a crown of the goddesses Hathor (Late Period, 332-30 BCE) in the middle, and a third model of a statue that we did not get a chance to fully see as the train pulled up but maybe it is Taweret?
We didn’t have time for the potential Taweret statue because we had spent our time looking at these mosaics instead. We imagine that they are reproductions, but it still doesn’t take away from their beauty.
From Sadat it was only 6 stops to Giza. My partner stood by the door of course, and tried to take pictures whenever he could. Below you can see, in order, the metro stations of Opera, Dokki, El Behoos, and Cairo University.
Our only complaint is that the metro was very hot. Especially because it was cold outside once the sun went down, so my partner was in a jacket, gloves, hat, and scarf. But down in the metro he had to take it all off because it was way too hot. But it’s fine, about 35 minutes later we made it to our station, Giza! Our review of the metro? Very easy to use and we love public transport.
Our only problem? The metro is about 9 km from our hotel/the pyramids. Uh oh. Again, and we can’t stress this enough, we don’t know what we’re doing or where we’re going, or how we are going to get there. We just follow everyone down from the station and then determine what side of the street we should stand on to continue with public transit. In theory we are on the same street as we were the other day when trying to get our SIM card, it is just a straight 8 km walk… It is 8 pm, my partner is getting tired, and he will absolutely not walk 9 km, ha.
Well, we leave the station and cross the street to stand in front of this mosque (Nasr El-Din Mosque) to wait and see if we can figure out how to keep going towards the hotel. There are others that are doing the exact same thing as us, so we know we’re not entirely wrong. But, this is where limited knowledge plays against you. We don’t actually know how to use public transit in Cairo. We see some busses pass us, but we can’t make out where they are going or how much they cost. And it seems like most Egyptians don’t even take busses, but instead they take mini busses. We definitely don’t know how to take these mini busses. We’re stuck. We wait around 10 or 15 minutes here debating what to do, all while my partner is thinking that he could have walked a portion of the distance in the time we’ve wasted waiting. Finally we decide that we can’t wait any longer and bail. We use a ride sharing app instead. However… it does not seem to be our night. The first guy just sits in traffic forever until they cancel. The second asks us to cancel… we say no, and keep waiting, but he eventually cancels. Others accept and immediately cancel. We wait another few minutes watching as a driver does circles and circles close to us, and then cancels. We really started contemplating how we would communicate with someone on where we wanted to go until a car finally showed up! We got in and he spoke to us in Arabic and we did not understand. But, we got the feeling that he was asking why we were getting a car when it was such a short distance and all of the busses/mini busses were right there. When my partner said “no arabic” he must have understood because he nodded and just drove, haha. We eventually made it to our hotel, got some more delicious food and water, and then went to sleep after having a look at our options for tomorrow. Good night from Giza!