What to do in Cairo on a weekend? First day trip.

In my last post I discussed the joys of a workcation. Well, I am on one. Sitting in the lounge of my hotel looking at the Nile gently flowing past. The only real problem is that it is hot. Very, very hot! Almost too hot to do anything apart from sitting watching the Nile go by while sipping on a cool beer. I have yet to find a really cold beer in Egypt.  But all in all, not too bad.
View of the Nile from my hotel room

So what to do if you have a day or two spare in Cairo? The problem is not what to do, but what you can do in the limited time available. There are endless possibilities of things to do and selecting just a few is the problem. There is just so much to do, that a much longer extended vacation would be pretty good.
This is called love. Keeping your man cool while he takes photos.

I am staying in the Marriott hotel, obviously the one by the Nile as I am sitting watch the Nile flow past! The Nile at night is really beautiful. Full of boats. With it being so hot during the day, everyone comes out at night.

The first day, I went to the most important of the many things to see in Egypt and these are the pyramids at Giza. All in all, they are just a huge pile of rocks! But not just any pile of rocks! Around two million neatly cut rocks, many weighing a few tons which have been packed in a very specific order to form the two main pyramids at Giza.  One has no idea of just how huge the Giza pyramids are, until you get up close and personal with them. Only then do you get an idea of how big the blocks are. How on earth were they moved - must have been aliens!  This was not my first time seeing the pyramids, and I must say, my wonder at seeing them had not diminished. I arranged my day trip before hand through Koki tours https://kokiegypttours.com/ . They, in turn arrange a local tour operator, Emo tours https://www.emotoursegypt.com/en, to look after me. The guide was Hala and the driver was Agmed. They were really great. I was very impressed with them and would gladly recommend them at any time. Their timing was pretty perfect. That is no mean feat when seeing the crazy traffic in Cairo.
The size of the stones!

Walk like an Egyptian
The ship of the desert
While talking about the traffic in Cairo! On my first trip, Marie and I thought that the traffic was crazy! Since then, I have been to India quite a few times. When it comes to crazy traffic, I think India takes the cake. There has been a lot of developments in road infrastructure and the traffic was really not as frantic as I had remembered. Busy - yes  - but not crazy. Not crazy like India anyway.

As with all tours in Cairo, the customary stop at the various perfume factories or papyrus institutes  selling only genuine papyrus are also included. You need not buy anything, although there is quite a bit of pressure to buy stuff.

I must say that the sellers of tourist goods at the pyramids are much better than they were in the past. It was very difficult to move without some guy sticking something you do not want in your hand and refusing to take it back. Much better now.

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