Today began with a 5:15am departure from the hotel in Lucie to catch our 1 1/4 hour flight back to Cairo. The hotel provided breakfast bags, mine came with 13 cutlery sets! They quickly replaced the cutlery sets with the food items I was missing.
On arrival in Cairo we headed to the Khan el-Khalili bazaar where we were met by another armed security tourist officer, who joined us for our mosque visit. He was much nicer, so I managed to sneak a photo but later found out he posed for photos with other people on my group.
With our long sleeves shirts, long pants and scarves on our heads we headed into Al-Azhar mosque. It was most interesting to be inside a relatively new, two hundred year old building. Many parts of it had been taken from ancient temples. I loved the carpet with prayer mats printed on it.
The bazaar was basically a much bigger version of the Luxor bazaar but many shops were closed, a reflection of our being there at 10am and reduced tourist numbers. It did have a much better jewellery selection, so I was able to purchase a few necklaces. Much of the market was unfortunately items made in China. Though there were interesting spices, powders and lots of dates available.
We've been upgraded for our last night in the Barcelo hotel, to deluxe rooms as we had to wait an hour before our rooms were ready, though we were there 2 hours before check in time! We had a final tour dinner at a local bbq restaurant, yet another great Egyptian meal.
On arrival in Cairo we headed to the Khan el-Khalili bazaar where we were met by another armed security tourist officer, who joined us for our mosque visit. He was much nicer, so I managed to sneak a photo but later found out he posed for photos with other people on my group.
With our long sleeves shirts, long pants and scarves on our heads we headed into Al-Azhar mosque. It was most interesting to be inside a relatively new, two hundred year old building. Many parts of it had been taken from ancient temples. I loved the carpet with prayer mats printed on it.
The bazaar was basically a much bigger version of the Luxor bazaar but many shops were closed, a reflection of our being there at 10am and reduced tourist numbers. It did have a much better jewellery selection, so I was able to purchase a few necklaces. Much of the market was unfortunately items made in China. Though there were interesting spices, powders and lots of dates available.
We've been upgraded for our last night in the Barcelo hotel, to deluxe rooms as we had to wait an hour before our rooms were ready, though we were there 2 hours before check in time! We had a final tour dinner at a local bbq restaurant, yet another great Egyptian meal.
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