Outdoor Patio Restaurant at the Khan El Khalili Bazaar | Cairo Downtown to Giza| Egypt Travel Blog: Day 09 (Part 61) 08D19

Cairo Khan El Khalili Bazaar Patio Restaurant | Through Cairo Downtown | Khan El Khalili Bazaar to Hotel Oasis in Giza

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

We all gathered at a restaurant and sat in the outdoor patio in the Khan El Khalili Bazaar. I met some people from other tour groups and we talked about our Egypt experience. Our tour guide joined us as well.

I only ordered mint tea. I liked Egyptian mint tea so much that I was having that almost daily.

There were other restaurants on the same row and all of them had outdoor patios. One funny thing I noticed was that some employees were shouting and fighting for customers to get into their restaurants. Sometimes I even saw them grabbing customers by the hand and pulling them onto their premises, so the next restaurant couldn’t get them.

It was an evening I would remember forever. Hot, humid Cairo weather with an invigorating gentle desert breeze, crowds, chaos, smells from the restaurants, and the thought that I was leaving Cairo in just 6 hours … they all made for an unforgettable and eternal experience.

I asked my tour guide to suggest some dry Egyptian sweets to take back to Canada. I also knew some names of sweets from the Felucca cruise. The tour guide asked the restaurant to airtight-pack sweets such as Basbousa, Kunafa, and Baklava for the flight. They prepared those sweets in nice boxes in different layers.

We were ready to head for Giza to our hotel. We would go through downtown Cairo and I was ready to video some downtown Cairo clips.

We hopped in our tour van to head towards Giza and our hotel. This trip would give us an opportunity to see downtown Cairo. Normally it would take about an hour to reach our hotel, but Sunday traffic was especially bad and it took a lot longer.

Downtown Cairo looked like any other big city’s downtown, but with a lot more chaos and crowds. There were big brand stores, restaurants, and cafes with their glimmering lights and shiny invitations to go in and shop.

The streets were heavily lit. There was lots of traffic and honking horns. What made Cairo different was the heavy volume of people. It’s hard to imagine this type of volume if you are from another country. When we were up on the expressway, it gave us a good chance to see the streets full of people from above and I was shocked to see so many people here and there.

I especially noticed the density of people near every open market or bazaar every few blocks here and there. There were vegetables, fish, meat, clothes, restaurants … basically anything you can think of had open-air stores on the streets. I couldn’t understand how it’s possible to even buy anything when you couldn’t really move because everywhere was jam packed with people.

We were supposed to reach our hotel in an hour, but traffic slowed us down. I was getting worried, as I had to leave the hotel on time to catch my flight leaving at 01:50 tonight. We finally reached our hotel after an hour and a half.

I rushed to my room to get ready to leave for my flight.

Haggling at the Khan El Khalili Bazaar in Cairo| Egypt Travel Blog: Day 09 (Part 60) 08D19

Cairo Khan El Khalili Bazaar Tour | The Most Famous Ancient Market in Egypt

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

I started walking in the main lane of the Khan El-Khalili bazaar first to take some pictures and videos. Later, I would buy some miniature pyramids and T-shirts.

There was a bizarre variety of stores and products. I thought if I had time, I would spend 5-6 hours in the Khan El-Khalili bazaar going store by store, lane by lane.

While I walked, employees were calling to me from almost every store. Some of them were offering prices in dollars and shouting amazingly cheap deals. The amount of stuff and numbers of people browsing on the street were really amazing.

This place never sleeps. The more you go through the night, the more it gets crowded. I think this is a common pattern in the Middle East. People go out more in the night time than the day time. My guess is it has to do with the sweltering heat during the day. 

I was looking for miniature pyramids and T-shirts with hieroglyphics on them. This was the time to put my haggling skills to test. After hearing their prices, I offered prices so low that the first two stores told me I was being unreasonable. Then I tried a few more and had no luck. I thought they were asking too much, seeing me a foreigner.

One store had both T-shirts and a variety of colored pyramids I wanted and they were ready to haggle prices with me. After spending some time going back and forth on a total price, as I was buying good quantity, we agreed upon a number. They even wrapped those little stone pyramids, so they wouldn’t break on the flight home.

I was heading to the restaurant where our group would meet and have something to eat before leaving the Khan El-Khalili bazaar.

Khan El Khalili Bazaar in Cairo| Egypt Travel Blog: Day 09 (Part 59) 08D19

Cairo Khan El Khalili Bazaar | The Most Famous Ancient Market in Egypt

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

After visiting the Cairo Museum, we headed to the Khan El Khalili Bazaar located in the heart of Islamic Cairo, not far from the medieval walled city, the Saladin Citadel. We were asked if we wanted to visit the Saladin Citadel, but everyone passed on that. Most of us were too tired and wanted to go back to the hotel.

They say no trip to Cairo is complete without visiting the Khan El Khalili Bazaar. Merchants, both local and foreign, have been trading in the Khan El Khalili Bazaar since the 14th century. Khan El Khalili was originally built as a burial site. The burial site belonged to the Fatimid Caliphs and these were the people who founded Cairo in the 10th century.

Going to the Khan El-Khalili bazaar is like going back in time to an old Arab souk. It’s hard to think of something you can’t find in the bazaar. You will find almost anything you can think of. Colorful candles and lanterns, jewellery, perfumes, musical instruments, handicrafts, sweets, spices I never knew existed, statuettes, souvenirs, silver jewellery, t-shirts, galabiyyas, belly dancing costumes … what more do you want?

Here you can put your haggling skills to good use and you are expected to haggle. At some stores when I started with 1/3 price of what merchant asked for, they were looking at me like I was an alien!

Even if you don’t want to buy anything, walking through the alleys and experiencing a different world will make your Egypt trip worthwhile. It is possible to lose track of time and get lost in the maze of stores.

We were given an hour and a half to visit the bazaar and then we would meet at a restaurant to eat and have tea.

The Egyptian Museum in Cairo Tour | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 09 (Part 58) 08D20

The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities | The Egyptian Museum in Cairo Tour

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

Our next stop was the Cairo Museum in downtown Cairo, Tahrir Square. If you only have a short amount of time, seeing the museum can be a daunting task. It has 120,000 artifacts that would take you 9 months to peruse if you spent a minute on each one.

Our guide gave us a tour of some of the items. The museum was so massive that I didn’t know what to photograph/video or what not to. I will describe the highlights of what I remember seeing.

- Tutankhamun’s Mask

- Statue of Khufu

- Statue of Khafra

- Statue of the Dwarf Seneb and his Family

- Amenhotep III and Tiye Colossal Statue

- Masks of Yuya and Thuya

- Merneptah Stele

Some of the statues and cages were all made of gold and for sure I had never seen so much gold in my life.

There were several floors, but I only visited 3 floors near the central area. I saw some animal mummies and there was also a display of daily necessities used by the Royals those days. I saw some flip-flops and sandals. Footwear existed and was invented in Egypt, but was worn only by Royals and rich people.

From here we would go to our last tour in Egypt, the open-market bazaar called Khan El Khalili.

Cairo Tour (Seven Churches in the Coptic District) | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 09 (Part 57) 08D20

The Church of St Sergius and Bacchus | This Is Where Jesus Lived in Egypt

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

We started our Cairo tour in the Coptic District where several churches and synagogues were located. The fascinating Church of St Sergius and Bacchus dates to the 4th Century AD. This is a historic place because there are stairs leading to another church underneath (the oldest Coptic Church in Egypt) where Joseph, Mary and Jesus lived when they were in Egypt. I saw the well from which Jesus drank water. The well is still preserved and sealed, but you can still see the water through the glass cover.

The church was a basilica design and had a nave and two side chapels. I saw an impressive carved wooden screen decorated in ivory and ebony separating the congregation from a small chapel.

The other places we visited here were the Hanging Church and the Synagogue of Ben Ezra. Located in a small backstreet, all these churches presented amazing architecture and beauty. The decorations inside them were awe inspiring. 

This peaceful place in the middle of Cairo felt like an oasis from the city’s hustle and bustle. There were so many historic places tucked into one location that I got confused while doing video trying to figure out which one was which.

From here, we would visit the Cairo Museum and end our trip visiting the Khan El-Khalili bazaar.