Lady’s Weekend in Cairo Itinerary

I was sitting in the lounge in LAX on my way home from San Francisco two Thursdays ago when I got an unexpected email from my boyfriend asking if I wanted to spend the following weekend in Cairo with two of our friends. It took me about two seconds to respond. Yes! Of course.

Weekend in Cairo

I’ve wanted to see the Egyptian pyramids for a long time, and Cairo has been high on my “places that are easier to get to from London than San Francisco” list for ages.

Plus, after going to the sparsely-artifacted Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of Pharaohs exhibition at The O2 last year, I wanted to see the good stuff.

Apparently it could be found in the Egyptian Museum. I was all set to spend a weekend in Cairo.

Hotel in Cairo

After a late arrival on Friday night, my friends and I checked into our hotel. We stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel Cairo at Nile Plaza, a beautiful place in the city center.

Saturday in Cairo

The following morning we woke up early and continued our weekend in Cairo by battling fog to get to Giza. As our taxi pulled into the parking lot in front of the ancient pyramids, I was surprised to find myself right on the edge of the city.

For some reason I always imagined the pyramids to be out in the middle of the dry desert, not right smack in the middle of a concrete jungle.

We spent the morning exploring the pyramids, climbing up and down long-empty tombs of kings and queens, over burial grounds of hundreds of thousands of “workers” (ahem, slaves), and across to the great and stoic Sphinx.

We weaved our way through camels and horse carts, big stones and small rocks, and touts selling every kind of souvenir from bright blue clay scarab beetles to postcards of the very pyramids we were photographing.

After stopping for a quick photo shoot with a camel, we headed back to the city center to continue our weekend in Cairo with a visit to the Egyptian Museum.

The museum itself was as full of ancient Egyptian artifacts as the pyramids were devoid of them.

In fact, there were so many statues, sarcophagi, stones, and mummies stuffed haphazardly into one building that I continually mistook entire rooms for storage spaces.

It didn’t help that some people were using the exhibits as chairs and benches, including a museum staff member, who was taking a nap on a 4,000-year-old stone block.

Other people seemed to be mistaking open coffins for trash receptacles for candy wrappers and beverage containers.

That was to say nothing of the descriptions of the exhibits, some of which looked like they had been typewritten in the 1950s and others of which were hand-written in ballpoint pen on torn sheets of binder paper. Bizarre.

In spite of the curation, the museum was brimming with amazing historic artifacts.

Not least among them were the contents of King Tut’s tomb, which were laid out in a special room and infinitely more extensive and impressive than the meager collection that came to London.

Lunch that afternoon was at Taboula, a great Lebanese restaurant by the British Embassy. It was a great meal, and we all enjoyed it.

Following an afternoon siesta, we spent the evening at Khan el-Khalili, Cairo’s famous bazaar. We walked through narrow streets and twisting alleys full of vendors hawking everything from silver jewelry to ironic T-shirts.

The first day of our weekend in Cairo finished with dinner at Naguib Mahfouz followed by peach-flavored shisha at the adjacent Khan El-Khalili Cafe. The food and decor were a bit underwhelming, but it was still a fun night out.

Sunday in Cairo

Sunday was a marathon day of seeing the sights. We continued our weekend in Cairo by heading down to Old Cairo in the morning, excited to see the Hanging Church and Coptic Cairo.

Navigating labyrinthine alleys, we made our way to a synagogue and several churches that paid diligent homage to Saint George and his dragon-slaying skills.

We walked through a Greek cemetery and Orthodox church, and finally reached the Hanging Church that we had heard so much about. It’s one of the oldest churches in Egypt and sits atop the ancient ruins of a Roman fort.

It being Sunday morning, we couldn’t go inside, but it was still nice to catch a glimpse of the service in progress and hear the chanting of the liturgy.

From Coptic Cairo we headed to the Citadel, where we saw several mosques and had great views of the city below.

From there we went to the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, a beautiful structure with a huge square courtyard and a tower we climbed for more views of the city.

Weekend in Cairo: The Verdict

Our weekend in Cairo came to an end not long after. We checked out of the Four Seasons Hotel Cairo at Nile Plaza and flew home to London to catch the very end of a day-long torrential downpour.

It led me to my usual winter conclusion: I need to travel more.

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