After a slightly longer sleep than the previous night, we were again on the move at 8:00am for our second day in Cairo. Our first stop being Saladin Citadel on Mokattam hill where we were provided with a great view of the city.
We then moved on to the Mosque of Muhammad Ali which is also located within the Citadel walls.
We were there for about 2 hours before moving onto the Cairo Museum in the centre of the city. For today’s tour we had an additional member of the team, on top of the usual three we were joined by a plain closed armed police officer. It doesn’t look like they are prepared to take any chances with our security.
After getting our entrance tickets and an additional photography permit we passed through two separate sets of scanners on our way into the museum. If Egyptian relic’s are your thing then this has to be the place to visit.
Our guide walked us round many of the must see items before giving us an hour of free time to see some of the other items. Tutankhamen’s treasures being one area we wanted to see as this was left from the proper tour. Unfortunately this is one of the areas of the museum where photography is not permitted so we just have to be happy with being able to see it for ourselves. There are too many artifacts to list individually so I have put together a collage so that you can get some idea of what we saw.
The building is looking very dated and the new Grand Egyptian Museum which is currently under construction will eventually take its place with all the items moving over when it is completed. This is scheduled to be in 2020 so we may come back once it’s done. We saw the outside yesterday while in Giza and it looks a very impressive building already.
We were back onboard for lunch at 1:30 which was followed by some well deserved R&R.
