Published on Jan, 2025
We were picked up from El Gouna at the ungodly hour of 2am. Curious about the ‘El Gouna airport’ we were taken to Hurghada, where the driver handed us over to a group, where we were herded to the check in. We had a 50 minute flight at 4 am to Cairo, where someone was waiting with a sign board for our group of 15.
Our guide introduced himself and boarded us on the mini van where he explained the itinerary.
As we were so early, we had to kill some time so grabbed a coffee to go with the falafel breakfast that we were given.
We started at the old town, where Halid (our guide) an archeologist, explained in detail about the 1000 year old town.
We were then taken to the old museum which home thousands of artefacts from ancient Egypt, including king Tut’s death mask.
It seemed to be mostly groups in the museum, which made it a bit tricky as there were always swarms of people around each of the artefacts that the guides wanted to show us. I ended up wandering off at times to look at things where there was no one else. My German partner booked the tour so was German speaking. Apparently Halid’s German is excellent (mine is not…)
After around 2 hours in the museum, we were taken to an optional Nile cruise (extra €10) which the whole group opted for. I wouldn’t bother again as it’s only 30 minutes and just in the city where the highlight seemed to be seeing all of the 5* hotels from the river. After that we were taken to a quirky restaurant for a buffet lunch, which was clearly a standard place for tour groups. The food was perfectly fine with plenty of choice.
We were then taken to the pyramids where we opted to pay the extra €30 to enter Cheops pyramid.
Unfortunately we had to queue for over an hour to get in, but worth the wait.
Others chose to ride a camel and take pictures from the plateau with was an additional € 10 per person. Following that we were taken on to the Sphinx which was spectacular.
We were then taken back to the airport for our 7pm flight. On our return, a driver was waiting to take us back to our apartment.
The whole trip was seamless and went like clockwork.
Halid had realised I was not German speaking so made an effort to include me.
We costed out the trip and honestly couldn’t have done it for much less by ourselves.
We both loved the trip and would highly recommend it.
