Ahmed enters the hotel lobby at 9am precisely. According to another of the guides waiting to greet his tourists for the day, Ahmed is the best guide in the whole of Cairo - a patter we’ve learned from many previous overseas trips where the guides all toast each other in front of their charges. It helps with bumping up the tips.
We’ve booked him, and our other guides in Cairo, through various different online companies, but he and the others are all freelancers. And they make their money via tips and are all very vocal about us leaving them good reviews through Trip Advisor and Viator.
He leads us out to our waiting car and within ten minutes our driver Betah is dropping us outside the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square. Once through the X-ray machines and past the huge groups disembarking from coaches Ahmed leads us into the courtyard in front of the museum where he points out the ponds of blue lotus flowers and papyrus, representing the ancient unification of upper and lower Egypt. The first unified nation state in human history, the Greek writer Herodotus called Egypt “the gift of the Nile”.
In the main entrance hall, Ahmed swiftly shows us the replica of the Rosetta Stone, whose original still resides in the British Museum, and then immediately leads us upstairs away from the throng. The virtue of having a private guide quickly becomes clear. While the groups all herd around the various exhibits, following their designated leaders with their little flags, and all trying to hear the explanations - as we did on our first visit in 2001 - we move quickly between displays, Ahmed telling us interesting facts and getting us the best views.
We look at ancient sandals, marvel at a golden chariot with leather tyres, gawp at exquisite chairs inlaid with precious stones and ivory, and study the longest papyrus scroll ever found; an inscription of the Book of the Dead stretched out on a wall like the Bayeux Tapestry. Many items are part of the breathtaking exhibition of Yuya and Thuya the parents of Queen Tiye, wife of the all powerful Pharaoh Amanhotep III. Their ornate and beautiful gold coffins, still housing their mummies are fascinating, bearing witness to five thousand years of history.
But the most spellbinding treasures are the most famous, housed in special rooms where no photos are allowed. The hundreds of relics of King Tutankhamen, the fabled boy king whose tomb was discovered by Howard Carter and excavated by Lord Carnarvon 100 years ago this month, are even more compelling and awe-inspiring on our second visit. The golden death mask is just magnificent in a way that photos cannot convey. Truly one of the most incredible and iconic artefacts of world history, it’s intricate and beautiful, mesmerising and powerful.
We walk around the exhibition drinking it all in, less rushed and hassled than on our previous whistlestop trip, and taking time to admire the different treasures, imprinting them into our memories in a way that we couldn’t first time around.
The opening of the billion-pound Grand Egyptian Museum, a spectacular new development close to the Pyramids promising to be the biggest museum in the world, was finally due to happen this month and we were worried that many of the greatest exhibits had already been transferred across, but it has been delayed again until 2023 and so we are treated to the most famous items still on display.
There’s the grand statues of Amanhotep III and Queen Tiye, the bust of Queen Nefertiti who was rightly renowned for her great beauty, the Narmer Palette commemorating the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by King Narmer, and the life size statues of King Djoser and the Pharaoh Akhantun, father of Tutankhamen.
One room is dedicated to the builders of the great pyramids with a tiny statue of Khufu (aka Cheops) being the only likeness of him ever found, and a triad carving of Menkaure, builder of the smallest of the three pyramids. Pride of place is taken by a magnificent black sculpture of the builder of the Great Pyramid, Khafre, resplendent with falcon headdress. It’s carved from diorite, a stone so hard that there are no modern tools that can recreate the precision and smoothness on display.
Further exhibits include pyramids sculpted from meteorites, a huge bust of Queen Hatshepsut, and both the seated statues of Rahotep and Nofret and the standing statue of Kaaper, each with their piercing crystal eyes. We could spend all day wandering around the museum and still only see a fraction of the exhibits but Ahmed has successfully navigated us through the crowds to the most impressive and important so we exit through the gift shop, to be picked up by Betah.
He drives us south along the Corniche before we cross the Nile, on the bridge over Golden Island and head west into Giza. The flyover is called the Green Route and was constructed by literally bulldozing through the vast amounts of housing that had been constructed without planning permission. All along the road, high-rise buildings have simply had their sides sheared off and the remains of painted and patterned walls that once were bedrooms and apartments show where lives were torn apart with no compensation.
The whole district of Giza is noticeably poorer than the decayed grandeur of downtown Cairo where the embassies, government buildings, shopping boutiques and international hotels like ours are based. Squalid dirt roads piled high with mountains of rubbish, along which horse drawn carts and tuk tuks rumble, are lined with dilapidated shops, where men smoke cigarettes over rotting meat and women in full veils buy groceries.
Once through the ticketed entrance to the Giza plateau, Ahmed leads us towards Khufu’s enormous pyramid which dominates the horizon. It is truly vast comprised of 2.3 million blocks, built over a twenty year time span, at roughly the same time as Stonehenge. It’s 481 ft high and for millennia it was the tallest building on earth, standing as a truly awe-inspiring monument to human achievement, religious belief and royal ego.
We climb up the steps carved into the first few blocks and peek into the entrance, where for $50 we could climb into the empty burial chamber, along with hundreds of other tourists. Fortunately we have a more exclusive pyramid experience to come in a few days time, so we continue our walk to Khafre’s smaller pyramid instead. Betah collects us there and whisks us up to the panoramic viewpoint for the obligatory photos pretending to hold the pyramids, although we skip the camel treks on offer, having lurched around on one before in Marrakech, looking ridiculous in Berber outfits.
In the distance we can see the new Grand Egyptian Museum, still looking like it’s a work in progress, but our next stop was completed many thousands of years ago, when the Nile still flowed through Giza, enabling the transportation of quarried stone blocks weighing five or ten tonnes. We walk through the Valley Temple, which once housed multiple statues of Khufu and was used for mummification, and emerge onto the viewing platform next to the Sphinx.
Imperious and mysterious, it stands proudly facing the now-disappeared banks of the Nile, entrancing tourists through the ages. Debate rages as to its true age but various theories suggest it pre-dates the Pyramids, possibly by millennia, and had its original head re-carved by Khufu into his own image.
By the time we’ve finished snapping photos it’s time for lunch but we’re not quite prepared for where Ahmed takes us. It’s literally a roadside café, essentially a basic kebab takeaway, and he jostles with all the locals to get us falafels, beans, pickled vegetables, salad and pitta bread.
We sit at a formica table and he plonks it down in front of us while we look at each other wondering if we dare eat it. Having used enough hand sanitiser for a football team we try a bit of the falafel, beans and pitta, while he tucks into the rest, hoping to God that our constitutions are strong enough to deal with the foreign bacterias.
Our final stop is a perfume “factory”. We’d already told Ahmed that we didn’t want to visit a papyrus factory as we’d been trapped in one on our previous visit, and the giant papyrus we’d been coerced into buying is still on display on our landing… but seeing how perfume is made could be interesting. Of course, we should have known better!
Golden Eagle perfumiers is not a factory, and once through the entrance it’s clear it’s a store. We’re whisked straight into a crystal bottle-lined room by a smooth-talking salesman called Mido, a screen is pulled across the door and as soon as we are seated, mint tea is proceeded. “Now you accept our hospitality,” he says eyes twinkling with his entrapment. “I am honoured!”
There’s nothing for it, we will have to go through with this. We are dabbed with various essences and told how they are the basis for all the great perfumes of the world, but these are the real deal, not massively diluted with alcohol as brand name perfumes are. Most impressive is the mint essence; a glass of boiling water is produced, and with just two tiny drops of mint essence it becomes the most potent decongestant we’ve ever experienced.
It’s all very slick, and both entertaining and enjoyable but we know what’s coming. Different bottle sizes and gift boxes are produced, each larger size coming with increasing discounts and we both know we’re going to have to make a purchase to get out of the building. So, to Mido’s evident great disappointment we choose the smallest gift box, containing four essences. “But this is just one between you. What about some for your ladies?” he asks. Darling, surely it’s obvious?
Coman is taken to the visa machine to pay while I supervise Mido’s assistant filling up the bottles of Lotus Flower, Papyrus, Mint and Tutankhamen essences, the latter apparently being the fragrance used by Hugo Boss in all his perfumes. As we leave, we notice Ahmed getting his commission. It’s an age-old routine… but we’re satisfied enough. We’ve got enough aftershave scents to last the next ten years.
We ask Ahmed and Bateh to drop us at the Cairo Tower, which is on Zamalek island, directly across the Nile from our hotel room window. We pay the entrance fee and ascend in the lift up 70 storeys to the viewing platform where we get the full 360 degree panorama of the city. Our hotel is tiny below us, on the east side of the Nile and there far to the west, just visible above the haze and pollution is the faint outline of the Great Pyramid. Cairo sprawls in all directions.
The walk back to the hotel takes us past middle class Egyptians enjoying their weekend, strolling the streets of Zamalek, and we cross the Qasr El Nile bridge as the sun starts to set, wandering via Tahrir Square and the American University of Cairo to the Corniche and eventually the Kempinski.
We head straight to the roof to catch the sun’s golden descent and drink a cocktail by the pool. We hope the alcohol in Coman’s Taste of Egypt (gin and hibiscus) and my vodka-based Mango Dazzler will kill off any nasty lunchtime germs. When we see the bill we know they definitely killed our wallet!
Coman says today has all been worth it however and after freshening up we eat in Osmanly, the hotel’s Ottoman restaurant. The meal is fantastic, with waiters washing our hands in a Sultan’s basin and bringing gorgeous breads and dips to start. We have Mercimek Çorbasi (lentil soup), Közlenmis Patlican (cold aubergine & pepper mezze), Ispanakli Pide (spinach and cheese flatbread) and Mahmudiye (oven baked ratatouille and rice).
The wine is a red Shahrazade, produced in Alexandria and very tasty. It’s also a fifth of the price of the European and New World wines on the menu, all of which are well known supermarket brands in the U.K. for sale here at eye-watering prices.
Well, when in Egypt, it’s rude not to drink their very own wine!
