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The primary purpose for visiting Cairo was to see the Pyramids. That
is documented here. This page shows off the rest of what we saw in Cairo.
There are a LOT of artifacts from ancient Egypt. We were too early for the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, but the Museum of Civilization and Museum of Antiquities have enormous collections.
We saw impressive mosques and Coptic cathedrals; the old Coptic area,
as well as the 'Garbage People' district and their Cave Church
An unusual sight for us was the Zabbaleen ('garbage people') district in Cairo. These folks are the garbage collectors and recyclers for 75 years or so. Their neighborhood (and streets) is stacked high with sorted and unsorted garbage. Apparently they recycle some 80% of what they collect.
The Zabbaleen community is also tied to the Cave Church - Church of St Simon the Tanner, founded in the 1970s. It's one of the largest churches in the Middle East and seats some 15000 worshippers in an open air amphitheater carved into the rock of Mokattam mountain. The walls of the cave are chock-a-block with paintings, carvings and the like. We were there during a service and it was packed. There are several other chapels also carved into the rock.
The massive Al-Rifa'i Mosque (dating from 1869 start of construction), really impressive in its own right, is the royal mausoleum, in particular for King Farouk and the Shah of Iran (who died in exile in Egypt in 1980).
We had a kayak outing on the Nile a few miles south of our hotel. I had imagined the outing was to paddle downstream to downtown and get picked up. No. It was paddling upstream; it took a lot longer to go out than to return. Our guide was about 17 yrs old and a national level paddler. Every now and then he'd put on a burst of speed just to uncoil.
We stayed at the Kempinksi hotel, overlooking the Nile and close to the British Embassy. As in Alexandria, the neighborhood was not very nice and didn't encourage wandering around in. On the last day of the trip, we did tour Heliopolis, which seemed much more big-city like - modern enough, big boulevards and well kept. We were not super impressed with Egypt as a city to visit, but of course the Pyramids made up for all that!
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