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Yeah 100% agree with the Uber recommendation.
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Jun 8, 2019 02:41
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Thanks guys! My friend just passed thru Egypt and gave me the same advice too (Uber and have USD for the visa). I'm arriving Friday morning and from what I've read thats like best case scenario. I had to re book my flights back from Rwanda and had the option to layover in Cairo or go directly to the EU so even if I have time for one selfie it will be worth it. STOKED!
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Jun 9, 2019 06:10
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Casual Yogurt posted:Thanks guys! My friend just passed thru Egypt and gave me the same advice too (Uber and have USD for the visa). I'm arriving Friday morning and from what I've read thats like best case scenario. I had to re book my flights back from Rwanda and had the option to layover in Cairo or go directly to the EU so even if I have time for one selfie it will be worth it. STOKED! Yep, that sounds pretty much ideal and it should be a breeze. Enjoy your 2-3 hours at the pyramids, which is enough time to be honest. If there are kids there on school or family trips, and you look like a foreign tourist (i.e. not-stereotypically-Arab), expect to be mobbed every ten seconds for them to want to take selfies together with you on their cell phones which is both endearing and then, after time #18, increasingly tiring since you don't want to be rude since they're well-meaning kids. Literally I probably posed for selfies with > 50 kids in the 2-3 hours I spent at the Giza pyramids complex. My wife could occasionally dull the kids' interest by speaking Arabic with them -- "oh you're not a foreigner" -- but sometimes the confluence of her style of dress + being with me + unaccented Arabic + being "European looking" == even more questions from kids. I don't really know of any way to mitigate this, but on Friday morning maybe there won't be so many kids there or if there are, they'll just be with their families and not in massive school groups of 30-40 kids.
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Jun 9, 2019 21:26
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My flight from Kigali was delayed almost 2 hours so I landed at 10:52 and my connecting flight was at 16:35. I got off the plane, airport was empty, I gave the currency exchange $45 and got the visa ticket and some Egyptian Pounds. Got the Uber, took 45 mins to get close enough to walk to the ticket booth, paid and went in for almost and hour, walked out and got some pizza thing from a bakery and called the Uber 44 mins back to the airport, plenty of time to wait for my flight. Easy with no traffic. 
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Jul 1, 2019 05:39
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Bummer on the flight delay! At least you got to do the highlights still. Also man it looks empty there. Friday morning looks perfect.
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Jul 1, 2019 09:36
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Nice, that's awesome! Glad you still got to see the pyramids 
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Jul 1, 2019 18:51
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Hi everyone! I found this thread and wanted to post here since I am planning on going to Cairo for little under a week later this month. I have been looking at the guided tours of the Pyramids and a day trip to El Ein Sohkna on the Red Sea. Any other recommendations? Should we just stick with using Uber and going to the Pyramids on our own? Probably for the Red Sea day trip we will hire a guide. I am also considering staying in an Airbnb as opposed to a hotel. Any thoughts on this?
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Mar 14, 2021 19:20
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Just Uber and pyramid on your own for sure. I have no experience with airBNBs in Cairo but the 5* hotels are so insanely cheap compared to standard western prices that I just went with that. We stayed at the Sofitel in Cairo and the Mariott (I think) with the pyramid view in Giza. A thousand percent worth it, IMO. With under a week in Cairo I wouldn't bother with the Red Sea at all. There is so much to do in Cairo itself you will more than fill out the time just there.
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Mar 14, 2021 19:39
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HookShot posted:Just Uber and pyramid on your own for sure. I have no experience with airBNBs in Cairo but the 5* hotels are so insanely cheap compared to standard western prices that I just went with that. We stayed at the Sofitel in Cairo and the Mariott (I think) with the pyramid view in Giza. A thousand percent worth it, IMO. What would you recommend doing in Cairo?
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Mar 14, 2021 20:12
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Busy Bee posted:What would you recommend doing in Cairo? Off the top of my head the amazing mosques, wandering through Khan El Khalili, the museum, the whole Coptic quarter... look it up on Tripadvisor, there are so many incredible sights in one of the primary cities of the Islamic golden age.
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Mar 15, 2021 01:23
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Busy Bee posted:Hi everyone! I found this thread and wanted to post here since I am planning on going to Cairo for little under a week later this month. Ain Sokhna is popular with people living in Cairo but I wouldn't really bother as a foreign tourist. Is "a week" 7 days? 5 days? 9 days? 5 days in Cairo is great, more than that I'd start looking at what you can do out of the city. [Edit: I see you said "under a week". If it's 6 days, then maybe consider an overnight trip. Otherwise IMO just stay in Cairo the whole time.] White Desert is a particularly cool 2D/1N trip out into the desert and I would recommend Western Desert Tours ( https://www.westerndeserttours.com/ ), run by a local guy in Bawiti and will probably run you around $200pp if you're two people. Fayum Oasis is also cool as a 2D/1N trip but I'd recommend the White Desert over Fayum. Alexandria and the whole Nile delta is 'meh' and I wouldn't put it on the "to do" list unless you had more than 3 weeks in Egypt. I really, really liked the southern pyramid complex in Memphis (Saqqara), and in many ways preferred it to Giza, although both are cool and if you have a whole week in Cairo I would definitely do both. Entering the Red Pyramid was one of my highlights in a little under a year of being in Egypt. It is not for the claustrophobic, but you can enter and go all the way down, and it is like 1/20th the price of the one in Giza and basically private. Giza is really cool but it is absolutely swarming with school trips of kids, whereas Saqqara is empty except for a handful of guards who are very chill. Maybe there is sometime that you can go without school trips, but while the kids are cute and friendly they also get exhausting, as you can't walk 100 meters without five kids asking to take their photo with you, assuming you look like a tourist. Use Uber for everything, never take a real taxi. Ubers are super cheap, like $5/hour when moving, and less if idling. For Saqqara, make sure to get the guy to stay with you the whole day: you won't find an uber back otherwise, and might have a hell of a time finding a taxi, in which case you'd need to wait for some other people to show up and hitchhike with them. Make sure your Uber driver knows you're requisitioning him for like 4 hours (45-60 min each way to Saqqara, and then a couple hours on the spot to see the stepped pyramid + red pyramid, which are a few km apart). Uber drivers have maybe a 50/50 chance of speaking English, and the way you pronounce "Djoser" will not be comprehensible to them (in Egyptian, it is pronounced more like "zouser"). There is a like 99% chance your Uber driver will be thrilled to drive you around for 4 hours. It's easier if you only use Uber for the 'to' and then pay them in cash for the rest of the trip, but if they don't speak English I guess you could just leave the app running the whole time, as it'll only cost you like $20-$25. The citadel is cool. Medieval Cairo is cool. You can almost always go up a minaret if you pay someone, often like 100 EGP but really it's a random price depending on your haggling and how much they think they can get out of you. (Al Azhar would be an exception, doubt they any rando go up the minarets there; if you want go up a minaret, pick a less famous mosque). Cairo tower is lame. The northern tip of Zamelek used to be super nice to hang out and have a drink and eat, but who knows how things are now; iirc some of it was shut down even before COVID (we left in Dec 2018). Coptic Cairo is really neat, easily worth a full day there, and there are plenty of hidden gems there as it is crazy hard to navigate. The first time we went we didn't even figure out how to get into the actual interior of the district. Cairo Metro works fantastically, it is super cheap, modern, clean, and depending on where you are going to/from, is probably faster than an Uber. Most other major sites you can find on Wikivoyage. Stay in an AirBnB imho, you can find something both nicer and cheaper than a hotel if you want to spend the time searching around. I have a place we loved, but it's way down in Maadi so I wouldn't recommend staying there, as it's a suburb for rich people, diplomats, and expats and not ideally situated for tourists. It's probably best to stay somewhere around Garden City or Medieval Cairo would be the most convenient, but anyway you'll be spending a lot of time in Ubers to get anywhere as the major sites of Cairo are very spread out. One other interest place that is not on major lists of "to go in Cairo" would be Garbage City which is a somewhat depressing but also very interesting Christian quarter where basically all the city's recycling gets done, which is all artisanal. The depressing part is seeing the kids take their donkeys out and load up plastic trash around the city, usually very early in the morning, and then they bring it back to Garbage City for sorting and recycling. There is a massive underground cave church in Garbage City which is fascinating - St Simon. The district is safe and people will be happy to see you, just don't take photographs of anything that people would consider degrading. People won't attack you or anything, it's a perfectly safe part of town, but obviously people want to show the best parts of their district, like St Simon, and not the plastic trash strewn everywhere. The only safety concern anywhere in Cairo is car accidents and crossing the street. Saladman fucked around with this message at 11:10 on Mar 15, 2021 |
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Mar 15, 2021 11:04
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Does anyone have thoughts on the cruises between Aswan and Luxor for a few days? I’d like to see the sights in that area anyway and it seems to avoid some of the driving. I’m worried it’s basically going to be a floating coach bus. I’d take recommendations on a nice boat if anyone has any, or recommendations to just stay in one of the towns along the way and do day trips instead.
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Sep 20, 2021 18:37
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theOctagon posted:Does anyone have thoughts on the cruises between Aswan and Luxor for a few days? I’d like to see the sights in that area anyway and it seems to avoid some of the driving. I’m worried it’s basically going to be a floating coach bus. How long do you have? 5D/5N would cover highlights (3D Luxor, 2D Aswan). 10D/10N would cover pretty much everything. I wouldn't focus on the sites between Luxor and Aswan unless you have more than 5D/5N. I think I spent 8D/8N when I was in the area a couple years ago (3N Luxor, 1N Edfu, 3N Aswan, 1N Abu Simbel) and that was a pretty busy schedule. We rented a car in Luxor and drove ourselves. The typical cruise ship is a floating coach bus, although you can also do the tour by felucca with a handful of other people (less comfortable, probably more interesting) and there are some high-end dahabiyas as well, e.g. https://www.nile-dahabiya.com/. Feluccas are small, dahabiyas are medium-sized, and the normal ones you see advertised are river cruise ships like you'd see in the Rhine or Mississippi. There are very, very few places to stay in along the way between Luxor and Aswan. Edfu has all of zero hotels and only a couple BnBs, like literally only two, and other major towns like Qena and Esna also have few if any places to stay. If you don't speak Arabic then trying to DIY and find a hotel that exists but isn't on Booking.com/Hotels.com/AirBnB is probably not worth the hassle. I stayed at the place you will find on Booking.com called "Mud House of Edfu" -- it's adobe, and quite nice, not like it sounds from "mud house". The (Egyptian) owner is a pharmacist and he's a great guy and he runs the BnB just out of his own interest and not really for the money. The other benefit of doing it by car means that every site you go to you will have it to yourself or nearly to yourself, assuming you are not unlucky and there at the time the riverboat cruises arrive - and they do not arrive nonstop, at least not since 2010 when tourism has been half-dead. Rental cars are very limited in selection. IIRC the only agency is Europcar at Luxor Airport and Sixt at Aswan Airport and Europcar doesn't actually have an office there, some guy has to come all the way from Hurghada to deliver and pick up the car. You'd also probably want some experience with chaotic driving like in Italy or wherever, but driving is not particularly intimidating – all of the southern Egyptian cities are fairly small and low traffic and (except for the desert highway) low speed due to the speed bumps every 500m that are the size of elephants. North of Luxor, Qena has the awesome Dendera complex which should absolutely not be missed, as it's the only monumental Egyptian structure that still has its upper floors and is almost entirely intact. Further north, Abydos is also really stunning. You can do both in a long daytrip from Luxor.
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Sep 20, 2021 19:59
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theOctagon posted:Does anyone have thoughts on the cruises between Aswan and Luxor for a few days? I’d like to see the sights in that area anyway and it seems to avoid some of the driving. I’m worried it’s basically going to be a floating coach bus. It basically is a floating coach bus, and it's all the horrible-ness that cruises generally entail (I assume, this was the only cruise I've ever been on), but at the same time, I still thought it was enjoyable and worth doing because you're still floating down the Nile. A lot of it is just hanging out on the top deck, either lounging by the pool or sitting at a table reading or just watching the views pass, enjoying yourself. I did mine in the middle of my trip and it was a good way to take a few kind of lazy days in between the go-go-go of the rest of my schedule. I would certainly book extra days in both Aswan and Luxor before and after to see the other sights. Luxor especially. We had an extra three days there and booked a private taxi (I can give you his contact info if you want) who was fantastic. I can't remember what he charged but it was very reasonable, and he took us everywhere we wanted to go, he took Mr. Hookshot to a pharmacy that wouldn't overcharge us, he would go in and buy us water himself since the shopkeepers charged him less, that sort of thing. Great dude, super friendly. And we saw some incredible stuff, especially at the Valley of the Queens (Nefertari's tomb is worth every cent) and Medinat Habu. Because we weren't on the cruise schedules we had everywhere practically all to ourselves.
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Sep 21, 2021 18:48
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Thanks to both of you. We are flying into Sharm el Sheikh for the laying on the beach portion of the vacation. After that I only have 8 days leftover on this trip to split between Cairo and wherever else before we fly home from Cairo so I’ll just do Cairo and Luxor for now and look to do Aswan on another trip. I’m strongly considering driving while in Luxor, I drive in Moscow so I would assume that would prepare me. I’d love the # of that taxi driver in Luxor as a backup, feel free to pm me or 
theOctagon fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Sep 23, 2021 |
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Sep 23, 2021 18:31
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theOctagon posted:Thanks to both of you. We are flying into Sharm el Sheikh for the laying on the beach portion of the vacation. After that I only have 8 days leftover on this trip to split between Cairo and wherever else before we fly home from Cairo so I’ll just do Cairo and Luxor for now and look to do Aswan on another trip. I'd recommend something like 4 days in Luxor and 4 in Cairo, unless you think you'd be back in Egypt at some point. You can easily spend two days in the west bank, 1 day in Luxor & Karnak itself, 1 day going up to Dendera and Abydos, and 1 day doing a trip down to Esna, Edfu, and El Kab. I know that's 5 days so you'll have to cut out something. We only spent one day in the west bank of Luxor so we missed some of the cool sites there like Medinet Habu. I wrote a pretty detailed post about Cairo earlier on this page (E: Yeah just a couple posts up on this page.) I've never been to Moscow but I've seen enough Russian dash cam videos to guess that driving in Luxor will probably be a breeze, since not every other driver is drunk. Still I'd only recommend driving if you actually enjoy driving and consider that part of the experience, as it will cost around the same and it will be somewhat more hassle to DIY than hiring a driver. Parking is really easy at all the sites, sometimes you have to pay, but it's usually official, cheap, and you get a receipt. Saladman fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Sep 23, 2021 |
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Sep 23, 2021 21:47
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Saladman posted:I'd recommend something like 4 days in Luxor and 4 in Cairo, unless you think you'd be back in Egypt at some point. You can easily spend two days in the west bank, 1 day in Luxor & Karnak itself, 1 day going up to Dendera and Abydos, and 1 day doing a trip down to Esna, Edfu, and El Kab. I know that's 5 days so you'll have to cut out something. We only spent one day in the west bank of Luxor so we missed some of the cool sites there like Medinet Habu. I wrote a pretty detailed post about Cairo earlier on this page (E: Yeah just a couple posts up on this page.) I agree with all of this. If you've driven in the developing world before I think you'd be fine in Egypt. You get used to the order in the chaos pretty quickly, and Luxor traffic is really easy compared to Cairo traffic. That said, I also agree that honestly it's so cheap to hire a driver that it's worth it if you don't think of driving as being part of the experience. Hamdi is +20 100 808 5246 and he has WhatsApp, that's the best way to get in touch with him.
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Sep 24, 2021 18:23
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