Maydān at Taḩrīr

It took all of 30 seconds to realise we had made the best decision ever to book our Egyptian adventure with Intrepid. We met with our transfer guy outside the gate at the airport and he sorted our visa, literally whisked us through immigration by taking us through the Diplomatic entry and had us at baggage claim in less than 5 minutes. So impressive!!!
Jim’s bag came out in the first minute and after a small panic, (with the conveyor belt stopping for 15 minutes and imagining myself wearing golf shirts & black shorts for the next few weeks), mine finally arrived. Phew!!
That’s when the REAL adventure began. Our transfer to the hotel.
With 23 million people living in Cairo alone and it being a city of cars, not scooters or bikes, the traffic was insane.
Lane markings appear to be purely decorative and we didn’t see a traffic light. What we did see was close encounters of all kinds, people casually strolling across what I thought was a highway, people jumping out of cars in the middle of traffic (like entire families), and new ones jumping in and even buses reversing down packed exit ramps. However it all just seems to work! Also meandering through the traffic are street cleaners with brooms keeping all the roads very neat and tidy.
After nearly 36 hours door to door, we checked into our hotel and wandered to the restaurant next door. It smelled quite lovely which I discovered was due to all the shishas being smoked everywhere. We may try one but now we are quite tired.
We met a lovely Egyptian man, Tommy who owned the restaurant. He sat and explained a lot of stuff to us - where to get bottled water for locals prices (Cairo apparently has local prices and tourist prices); in fact after dinner he walked us to the “fixed price supermarket “ where we stocked up on water for 10c a bottle and a few other snacks.
Exhausted we fell into bed at about 9pm ready to explore this phenomenal city tomorrow. Our actual tour begins on Sunday.Read more