Egypt 2023 : Part 7 : Cairo

Monday 20 March

Apart from the crowds, we loved the Egyptian Museum.

The new museum which is out near Giza has been under construction for a long time but no-one knows when it will open. I am so happy we got to see the old one. It's great! It's so outdated it's a treasure itself. Wide marble  corridors lined with statues and priceless treasures, many that you can touch.

Rooms and rooms full of dusty wooden cabinets full of more priceless treasures. Poor lighting. Little cards with notes typed on manual typewriters, hand written catalogue numbers on scraps of paper and items pinned to shelves. 

You could say all these antiquities deserve better but it's so much fun to discover stuff here and to see the treasures of Tutenkamen's tomb is mindblowing.

Downtown Cairo is busy and chaotic all the time.

We had a late lunch at an historic cafe called Le Grillon where they serve beer and wine. We finally tried the thick green soup called Molokhia made with "Jews Mallow" a green leafy plant and flavoured with garlic and coriander and eaten with rice. We stopped for a coffee and a shisha with the locals.

Then another glass of wine at another historic Cafe Le Riche before a good dinner at classic Restaurant Felfela. We had grilled pigeon and stuffed artichokes.

And just like that it's our last night in Egypt.