Grand Egyptian Museum pre-opening...

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I'm ready to fly out of Jeddah around lunch time on Saturday, but I only need to be in Lubumbashi, Congo on Tuesday lunch time! What do you do in between, knowing that the amount of airlines available is pretty limited! I could have spend 1-2 days in Johannesburg, but that's already in the plan for May. So instead, Cairo is the plan! Been to Cairo tons of times, the latest being only 20 months ago, so let's try to do something new!



This trip has been booked for a while. The hope was to have the opening of the new grand Egyptian Museum done by Spring 2024. Well, at the speed it's going, they will be ready by the end of 2024, maybe! The good news is that they are running a pre-opening phase. For a not so cheap amount, you have a 30 minutes movie, and a 45 minutes English speaking guide tour of the lobby and the Grand Staircase. I booked the last visit of the day, 3pm, for the first day of Ramadan!



This will be the biggest Museum of the world once open, beating even Le Louvres in Paris. So a quiet visit was actually coming with a certain feeling of luxury and excitement! To top it up, the guide was also super informative. The movie was nice, but clearly lacking any useful information! I left the place at 5pm. The break of the fast, and first day Iftar was at 6.01pm. The trick was to be back at the hotel by that time. There is no wifi yet in the main lobby, so I was lucky to have a young employee at reception sharing his wifi in order for me to book a uber!



This time, I didn't stay in crowded Cairo, but rather in the City of 6th October. It's a good 60kms by the ring road from the airport, passing by Giza and few kilometers behind the Pyramids. No view from the Hilton and Movenpick where I stay in each hotel for one night!



Uber is the perfect transportation savior around here! Even with the Ramadan, the ride from the airport is between 8 to 15 usd one way! The Hilton is also next to the Dreamland Pyramids golf course...no decent view of the said Pyramids! I once play 9 holes in Zamalek, so this would be my second round of golf in Egypt. There isn't a lot to write about the golf course. Average price, average maintenance, average lay-out....but it was a good morning spent playing golf!



The Movenpick and Hilton are also both next door to the Mall of Egypt by Uber. This is the top Mall in Egypt! I arrived on Saturday, on Wednesday, 3 days prior, the country devalued the Egyptian Pound by 60%! That's huge, so I was ready for some bargain hunting!



How wrong was I!!! Everything is bloody expensive, even in USD terms! I have no idea how the local population is surviving the prices! I'm not only speaking of the nice shops, by food prices at the huge Carrefour were scary too! I can only feel sorry for the Egyptians!



The day temperature was windy and around 22 degrees and lower than 13 degrees at night! So I enjoyed some me time in my room while not playing golf or stocking on snacks for Congo! I'm writing this from Kinshasa after spending few days in Lubumbashi. Tomorrow another cold day for me in between planes and I'm home in South Africa on Thursday for few days! Not sure if anymore blogging for the coming days... but do expect me back in early April...from another top spot in the world!



Till there, let's hope for a safer world!

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Comments

[cabochick]

A must see, If they ever open…
I got to experience the pre-opening too. For $4 as I booked myself as an Egyptian national by mistake. It will be something else when they finally open…if they do.