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.