honda400ex2

Will have a full free day in Cairo at the end of the trip. Will see all the major sites with the tour. Just looking for places or things to do by ourself. Interested in some light shopping (Markets) or any good places to eat. Also what are the popular things that are sold as souvenirs at some of the markets? What to buy and what to avoid?
Thanks again
Tim

Marsh

When my husband & I were in Egypt in Nov. 2003, and had extra time, we returned to the Egyptian Museum to see parts of it again on our own. I went straight to the King Tut exhibit & was able to get a decent picture of the golden mask!

africatravel

Hi,
If you have not seen this already as part of your tour, you could ckeck out the Hanging Church and the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus (Abu Serga). I loved them!! In the latter, they say that Christ had taken shelter in the basement. You don't actually get to go to the basement, but you can peep.

If you want to shop, this is what we purchased on our trip last year that we use all the time:

- Leather egyptian jacket for my husband. He wears it all the time, it looks great! We went to the mall to purchase that. We got it for about $45 I think.

- Papyrus from Khan El Khalili (spelling?) market. I think we got 3 good big ones for $45. They make great gifts.

- Nubian style earrings that I wear all the time. People really ask me about them all the time. I wish I had purchased some more!

- cotton shawls. I purchased 3-4 of them for $10-12 each and they are great. I use them all the time. They make great gifts.

Next time I got, I am going to load up on this stuff.

Sherif

Obviously AfricaTravel's suggestions are good with regards to what to visit.

I would also add, if you are interested to be away from historical sites and combine a visit with shopping to consider the Districts of Kerdassa and Haraneyya (outskirts of Giza):
Kerdassa is noted for its embroidered cotton and silk dresses.
Haraneyya is Egypt's main center for hand-made carpets.

MariaL

Whatever sites you decide to see, I suggest you hire a driver from your hotel to take you around. It is an efficient and not-too-expensive way to maximize your time. On our full day with a driver, we visited the Ibn Tulin Mosque and adjacent Gayer-Anderson House, the Sultan Hassan Mosque, and returned to the Citadel, which was interesting because it was Friday and crowded with Egyptians but almost no westerners. We also visited the Coptic area and went back to the Khan al Khalili for lunch. Since we wanted to wander an Old Cairo neighborhood, our guide dropped us off for an hour while he said his prayers, advising us that it we would be quite safe as long as we didn't eat any food from the area. We enjoyed the free day away from the tour, knowing always that our driver would be waiting for us to take us to the next site and back to our hotel
at the end of the day. Our driver was friendly with fairly good English, so we also enjoyed talking to him about his family and his life in Cairo.
Another option would be to have Debbie Senters from Casual Cairo Detours plan a customized tour for you and take you around, which we would have done had she been available that day:www.casualcairodetours.pyramids.net We used Debbie for a day trip to Alexandria, and she was excellent.