“Hey Lady…How can I spend your money?”

#cairo

#viking

#pyramids

#checkthisoffourbucketlist

April 7, 2026 Viking Amun pre-cruise in Cairo at the Sheraton Hotel to April 9, 2026, arriving in Luxor, Egypt

So let’s backtrack….

The last blog I wrote we were leaving the Viking Vesta after our 16 day Malta, Morocco and the Mediterrean cruise and spending a few days in Barcelona, Spain on our own.

We disembarked the Viking Vesta at 9am and took a taxi to our hotel downtown Barcelona. Our very centrally located hotel had our room ready when we arrived, and we were thankful not to have to put our luggage in storage for the time being. We immediately made plans to walk around our downtown location and figure out what tour we wanted to do.

We enjoyed seeing inside Casa Batlo, the house that Antoni Gaudi designed in the heart of Barcelona.

We had also wanted to see inside the Sagrada Família, the Basilica which Gaudi also designed and which is supposed to finally be finished in 2026 after 144 years. Unfortunately being Palm Sunday and not booking far enough in advance, I was not able to secure us tickets to the Sagrada. I have toured inside the Sagrada before and Richard is travelling on business later this year to Barcelona, so hopefully he has a chance to see inside the Sagrada when he visits.

We had a wonderful dinner on Saturday evening at a restaurant down the alley way beside our hotel called El Quatre Gats which is refer Pablo Picasso held his first one man show and created art for the restaurant in 1900.

That was kind of a cool serendipity…since we didn’t know how famous our restaurant was until we had settled in for dinner!

On Sunday we decided we would visit Park Guell in Barcelona another master-piece of Antoni Gaudi which we had never visited before. I was able to book a group tour for us with an English speaking guide and we figured out the Barcelona Metro to get us close by the park before we had to result to an Uber, rather than walk uphill to the park.

The park was very crowded on Sunday with local families visiting the park as well as tons of tourists too. It was enjoyable though and I’m glad I’ve knocked off the big 3 of Gaudi’s masterpieces off my bucket list. Hopefully Richard will see inside the Sagrada when it is finally completed!

We left Barcelona on Monday March 30, 2026 taking an Uber to the Barcelona airport. I had paid for us to have priority check in and that also got us priority security screening on Vueling airlines.

Vueling is a budget airline but having paid for bulkhead seats and priority screening etc, was a very good idea.

We arrived in Paris and notified our Air BnB host that we would be arriving around 1pm to the unit on Boetie Street in Paris. We took a van taxi to downtown Paris which took about 45 minutes and cost 45 euros flat rate.

Everything had been going quite well on this trip until the Paris Air BnB. I won’t get into the details on the issues we had with the ‘luxury’ apartment we had in Paris but needless to say I may be getting a full refund for the stay in Paris which was very expensive.

We had a fabulous time in Paris! It is my favorite city in the world and we are Metro experts, which makes getting around in Paris fantastic!

Starting the week off in Paris with a guided tour of Notre Dame that has been restored after the massive fire, was a real treat.

Day 2 had us taking a tour from Paris to the Palace of Versailles which was stunning! I had always wanted to visit Versailles but never stayed in Paris long enough to make time for a tour. Day 3 had us getting lost in Le Marais our favourite arrondisment in Paris, Day 4 we wandered around looking for out of the way patisseries. Day 5 was Paris flea market and Day 6 was looking for good photography spots, street art and grafitti in some out of the way places. All the time we used the Metro, Bus, and Tram service on our daily passes to get around Paris.

Of course we had to buy an extra suitcase while we were up near the Paris flea market area, so now we are up to 4 checked bags! OMG!!! I really didn’t pack well for this trip and will do better next time I travel. I left the packing until 2 days before the trip and couldn’t part with some of the clothes I brought along with me.

We arranged for an Uber van to pick us up to take us to CDG airport on Monday and we were not allowed a late check out from the Air BNB so we left spectrum Paris on Easter Monday at 10am and arrived at CDG at 10:45am. Easter Monday was a great day for traffic as no one was travelling to work given it was a holiday.

The only issue we had once we arrived at CDG was the check in counter for Air Egypt did not open until 1pm! We sat around the check in area and we met a man named Mohammed who was also travelling to Cairo (he was from CHAD) and he was going to Mecca. He had done the trip to Cairo many times and he took us under his wing and kept pestering the guards and gate agents to open up for us. He ended up first in line at check in and we were right behind him. Mohammed guided us through the long walk through passport control, security and the long walk to the terminal we departed from.

Our flight was not until 4:20pm so we had a really long day at CDG waiting to fly.

When we finally boarded the brand new A380 Airbus Air Egypt plane, we were happy to find that the plane was only about half full. We had a hot meal served to us which was quite tasty and I watched a movie. We were able to spread out since the seat in between us was vacant. This leg of our trip was the only long haul flight (4 hours, 20 minutes) that we did not book Business Class airfare.

We arrived at Cairo airport knowing that we would be met by the Viking Rep who was to assist us in getting our Egyptian Visas. When we finally got to the area where the Viking Rep was located, he told us to “Go line up there and pay $30US cash each for your Egyptian Visas”. The Egyptian Banks at the airport have counters where you line up, show your passport and they paste in a visa to your passport, stamp it and take your $30 in 5 seconds flat.

Our Viking rep then told us we had to go through passport control and if we paid $15 USD by credit card we could go through the Diplomatic line. So of course we paid the $15USD to get processed quicker into Egypt. There were very long lines and mass confusion at the other passport control gates, so paying $15USD was a small price to pay to be processed quickly. So we arrived in Egypt and within 15 minutes had spent $90 USD and we still didn’t’ have our luggage!

The baggage area was massive and of course everyone already had luggage carts. I’m not sure where we were supposed to get a luggage cart from but the Viking Rep did assist with getting our luggage off the conveyer and we managed to find all of our checked bags made it to Cairo.

We walked with our luggage to a mini van which the Viking Rep walked us to over some pretty uneven terrain, and then once everything was loaded we spent the next hour in busy, honking traffic getting to our hotel - the Sheraton Hotel and Casino in downtown Cairo, on the Nile River. The trip from the airport at 9:45pm at night took about an hour. We were tired and hungry but the check in process was handled quickly as we met our Program Manager Ahmed in the lobby of the hotel when we arrived.

Our luggage was sent to our room and once we arrived to our room our luggage also arrived to our room. Our view on the 19th floor was of the Nile and when we opened our balcony doors all we could hear was honking traffic everywhere!

We ordered some Room Service and I started to unpack and get organized. Our Viking Daily was in our room and we had been advised by Ahmed that we would be meeting at 8am the next morning after our buffet breakfast to have a full briefing of our Egypt tour and then at 9am our bus would leave for the Temple of Karnak.

We didn’t get to bed until quite late after getting the room organized with luggage and clothes for the next day, so the morning came very quickly when we had to have eaten breakfast before our 8am meeting.

At the briefing we were divided into 3 groups - A, B, C. These groups we would stay in for the entire trip and each group would have an Egyptologist with them for the duration of the trip. Our Egyptologist also happened to be Ahmed, the Program Manager for our trip. Nice!

Our included excursion today was to see the Step Pyramid of Djoser or Saqqara located in Giza, the city on the other side of the Nile River from Cairo. Everywhere we go we are told our journey could be “45 minutes….depending on traffic!”

The step pyramid was the first pyramid to be built by man in the 27th Century BC.

After visiting the Step Pyramid of Djoser we went to visit the Saqqara Mastaba which is a mortuary tomb with flat sloping sides. We went inside the tomb and were able to get our first glimpse of hieroglyphics and cartouches inside the tomb.

We had lunch at a very nice resort near the Step Pyramid which was a buffet style, with BBQ meats and Egyptian sweets. After lunch we were drove in the bus to downtown Cairo to visit the mosque of Mohmmed Ali built at the Citadel of Cairo in 1266AD.

Our visit to the mosque included taking our shoes off or putting plastic coverings over our shoes. Richard elected to take his shoes off instead of the plastic coverings but what he didn’t realize was we would be exiting the mosque a different way than we went in. He ended up in his stocking feet on the other side of the mosque with no shoes and our guide rushed with Richard back through t he mosque to see if his Sperry Topsiders were still waiting for him at the entrance to the mosque! Luciily no one had taken his shoes!

We drove back to the Sheraton tired after a long day in the sun, but our day was not over with yet as we had signed up to do an optional tour to the oldest market in Cairo followed by a traditional Egyptian dinner at a boutique hotel in the market. We returned to the hotel at 3;30 and our market and dinner tour was to start at 5:30pm. We felt like we haven’t stopped since we arrived in Cairo and we were getting pretty tired at this point from the heat and the GO, GO, GO!

We showered and changed and got ready for our next tour and met on our bus at 5:30pm to go to the oldest market in Cairo. The traffic was absolutely nuts and it took us until 6:30pm to get to the market. Ahmed our Program Manager was leading this optional tour and he told us that we would need to keep our Quiet Vox devices on and really pay attention to our footing in the market.

The pavement was very uneven and worse than uneven pavement were the motor scooter and small pick up trucks that would whiz by us every so often in the market without much warning. Ahmed did not want to lose anyone and of course all of the vendors in the market were trying to get us to buy their goods. They would accost us every step of the way trying to get us to buy tshirts, alabaster, belly dancing costumes and whatever else they were selling in the market as we wound our way through the narrow streets of the market.

After about 45 minutes of walking from the bus, through the very busy, chaotic streets of the market in Cairo we finally came to our restaurant which was located on the 6th level of the hotel. There was a very small elevator, or we could take the stairs. We took the stairs which turned out to be twice the distance we expected because each floor had two sets of stairs!

The food we were served was plentiful and kept coming. We had tomato soup, pickles, hummous, pita, okra, beef, lamb, chicken, rice and for dessert we had a rice pudding. The meal was good, but not great. Our guide Ahmed said that Egyptians like to cook for double the amount of people that are coming for dinner to show their hospitality. We didn’t like to see the food wasted but there was no way we could eat all of the food that was presented to us.

After our meal, we had a very interesting walk through the oldest part of the Cairo market which has seen the same stores passed down from generation to generation in the same building and location. Ahmed said that some of the stores we were seeing were being run by the 4th generation of the same family.

Ahmed gave us 20 minutes of free time to explore the market on our own. No one wanted to explore though as everyone was pretty tired after such a long day in Cairo. As we walked back to the bus the funniest line I hear all day from a vendor was “Hey Lady, how can I help you spend your money?” I turned around and told the vendor “Great line!”

But I still didn’t buy anything.

We had a 45 minutes bus ride back to the hotel and we were exhausted! The dust of the desert seems to infiltrate everything; Cairo is so dirty, chaotic and noisy and we had a very long day in the heat, although it did cool down to about 15C for our market tour this evening.

On Thursday our day was to start with breakfast in the hotel and then we had to be on the bus by 8:30am for our drive to the brand new ‘Grand Egyptian Museum’. Everyone was very excited to be going to the Grand Egyptian Museum since it had just opened in November 2025 and housed the complete collection of artifacts from the tomb of King Tutenkahmen, the boy king who died at age 18.

The Grand Egyptian Museum which opened on the 103rd anniversary of Howard Carter’s discovery of the intact tomb of King Tutenkamen is the largest museum in the world dedicated to one civilization. Located 2 km from the Pyramids of Giza, the museum houses artifacts from the pre-dynastic period of Egypt to the Roman period of Egypt. There are over 100,000 artifacts on display including 20,000 from the tomb of King Tutankhamen. The museum is over 5 million square feet of space for exhibits. It was nice and airy and open and reminded us of a very modern airport terminal in the lobby of the museum, except of course there was the mega large statue of Rameses the II in the lobby.

Our guide Ahmed is an amazing guide and did a fantastic job showing us some parts exhibits in the museum outside of the King Tut section that he found fascinating. He lives in Giza and has been able to visit the museum about 20 times so far since it opened, getting to know it better and learning what he could explain to a group of 20 people quite quickly. Fast facts so to speak.

We had some free time on our own in the museum and we headed towards the Khufu boat display which was a completely different section of the museum from the King Tut section.

Lunch was on our own today and there were a number of different cafes and sit down restaurants in the museum. I had a little companion sit and watch me eat my lunch wishing I would share with him.

After lunch we assembled for our transfer to the Pyramids of Giza. The first stop though was to either take a photo or go on a camel ride. Unfortunately we were not told that to take a photo of the pyramids we would have to walk through where the camels were, which was very stinky and dirty with camel dung. Neither one of us wanted to ride a camel as we had been warned we might smell afterwards. Regardless, we took some photos and then went back to the bus.

We headed closer to the Giza pyramids to see the Great pyramid of Giza which was built for king Khufu (2589-2566 BC), and the other 2 pyramids which were build for his son Khafre and Menkaure, his grandson. The Khufu pyramid is the oldest and largest and another building of this height would not be built for scourge 3,800 years!

We had some spare time at the pyramids to be able to walk around them and to touch them. Touching them means that we will come back to Egypt. The pyramid is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the only one still standing. The pyramids were originally covered in smooth limestone. The Great Pyramid of Giza was originally 481 feet talll and has shrunk and is now 454 feet tall. These 3 pyramids are not the only ones in Giza. There are smalelr wives and sisters pyramids. The pyramids took over 20 years to build and we are still not sure how it was done. Each of teh limestone blocks used to build them weigh 2 tons. How the laborers were able to maneuver the stones to construct the pyramdis has been debated for centuries. Most people agree that workers used a system of ramps, sledges and pulleys to move the enormous blocks but it is still not known how the ramp configuration worked and whether sand or water was used to help reduce the friction of moving the stones. There are some papyrus records that show the pyramid stones were being floated from Tura, which lies across the Nile from Giza, on boats. It is estimated that it took 20,000 laborers and 20 years to build. The pyramids are exactly aligned with the cardinal directions of north, south, east and west and off by just a fraction of a degree. Each of their entrances faces north and all of their temples face east. Some scholars also believe the layout of the three main pyramids is meant to mirror the stars in Orion’s Belt, a constellation associated with Osiris, the god of the after life.

After walking around the pyramids in the heat, we got back on the bus for a short drive over to the Great Sphinx. The Sphyinx’s construction remains a mystery but it was most likely built during Khafre’s reign around the same time of the construction of the second pyramid. The Sphinx is facing East as well. It is believed that the Sphinx was to guard the eternal resting place of the pharaohs.

After our short visit to the Sphinx we headed back to the Sheraton Hotel and Casino on the Nile. Dinner was on our own this evening and we had to pack up to be ready for our 5am wake up call, 6am bus ride to the airport, for our 8am flight to Luxor. We would be joining our cruise ship the Viking Amun tomorrow in Luxor finally!

We had dinner at the Sheraton in the Italian restaurant with our friends Steve and Sue from the U.K. who we had met on the Viking World Cruise in 2022/2023 and who had joined us for this leg of our vacation in Egypt.

I packed our bags to have them ready to go outside our hotel room and we got a quick night’s sleep. The 4:30am wake up call was not very nice, but necessary.

We had our bags outside our room at exactly 5:15am, and headed downstairs for breakfast in the restaurant on the 2nd floor. We were to be at the bus at 5:45am to identify our suitcases which would be then loaded on the bus. Since we had so many suitcases, I packed one suitcase to stay in Cairo, and to be transferred to the hotel which we will be staying at when we arrive back from the Nile Cruise. Richard took care of making sure that someone was responsible for our bag and that it would be at the HIlton Cairo Airport hotel when we arrive back to Cairo.

We were transferred to the Cairo Airport in our 3 buses and then we went through security twice and sat in the terminal at our gate for the bus transfer across the taxi way to our private plane - a Bombardier Dash 8 that Viking had chartered for the 61 people who would be doing the Nile Cruise with us on the AMUN. The ship holds 80 passengers so it is nice that we are not full!

Our flight to Luxor took about 1 hour. Since we cruise on the south part of the Nile from Luxor to Aswan, it is much better to fly to Luxor from Cairo, rather than sit on buses for an entire day of our vacation.

When we arrived in Luxor we identified our luggage and it was transferred to our waiting ship and we hopped on our 3 buses with our Egyptologist guides.

We left the airport for Karnak Temple at 9am on Bus A AMUN and were advised not to get confused with Bus A Antares which was another Viking cruise which had passengers also staying at the Sheraton. The Antares is the oldest Viking ship in the fleet on the Nile which they purchased from another cruise company and have renovated it to be a Viking Ship. Our ship the AMUN is brand new having just started operations last year on the Nile.

We had our Quietvox devices and ear pieces at check in, in Cairo, and we had to also use these once we got off the bus at the Temple of Karnak.

Karnak temple is the largest religious building ever constructed covering a site measuring nearly a mile by two miles in area. It was dedicated to 3 Egyptian deities: Amun, king of the gods; Mut, mother goddess of ancient Egypt; and Khonsu, god of the moon.

Construction on this temple complex spanned nearly 1,300 years, beginning in the 16th century BC and vocations into the Greco-Roman period.

The temple showcases some of the finest examples of ancient Egyptian design and architecture.

Richard was starting to feel like he was coming down with a cold. As we were leaving Karnak temple they had a few gift stores, but also a Pharmacy. I said to Richard we should go in and speak to the pharmacist to see what he can sell you for your cold, since pharmacists in Egypt can prescribe medicine. Richard was able to get some decongestent, Cough syrup and some 5 day antibiotics to stop his cold from going to his chest. Well that was handy!

After visiting Karnak temple we went to the library in Luxor to see a quick video about Egypt. I fell asleep during the movie since we had been up so early this morning to catch our flight to Luxor. Luckily the movie did not last long and we hopped back on our bus and from the library went directly to our ship the Viking Amun!

Our luggage had been delivered to our stateroom and we were blown away by how nice our 2 room suite is on this river cruise ship!

We are looking to a great week of sailing and hopefully I can write more blogs along the way, but the internet is very touchy in Egypt, so we shall see.