Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider
- As a city of more than 20 million people, Cairo is the most populous city in the Middle East. It has a reputation as a busy, crowded, and polluted city with few reasons for tourists to visit.
- Business Insider international correspondent Harrison Jacobs and producer Annie Zheng visited Cairo in December expecting it to be little more than a stopover before visiting Egypt’s bucket-list attractions like the Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx, and the temples of Luxor and Karnak.
- After spending two weeks exploring the Cairo’s interesting food, vibrant culture, and nonstop energy, they fell in love with the city. Future visitors ought to make time to explore the Egypt of today, not just the Egypt of 5,000 years ago.
As a city of more than 20 million people, Cairo is the most populous city in the Middle East and the second most populous in Africa. It feels like it.
Every highway, road, and alleyway is clogged with cars and motorbikes spewing fumes into the air. The honking never stops: long honks, short beeps, and everything in between. The cars, and their drivers, are in every kind of conversation imaginable. Other noises proliferate, from street-side shouts to the rumble of construction.
While those elements likely drive most tourists out of the city as fast as they come in, visitors willing to brave Cairo’s idiosyncrasies will find a colorful city full of mad energy. The alleyways teem with shops, restaurants, and cafes and around every corner there’s another Egyptian cracking a joke either with or at you.
Though Egypt’s tourism industry, and economy at large, has taken a major hit since the 2011 Arab Spring Revolution, a new entrepreneurial generation is making the city its own, opening new restaurant concepts and starting new businesses.
I (Harrison, here!) spent two weeks in the city in December, along with my travel partner and Business Insider’s international producer, Annie Zheng.
Here’s what it was like to visit Cairo.
Let’s this out of the way: Cairo is not an easy city. It’s loud, rambunctious, crowded, and colorful. The traffic is legendary. I experienced it for the first time on my trip from the airport, which took close to two hours to drive 14 miles.
Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider
We booked a room at The New President Hotel in the embassy-populated, moderately wealthy island of Zamalek. Considered one of the greenest parts of the city, Zamalek has tree-lined streets, views of the Nile, and is a short drive over the bridge to downtown. It’s slightly quieter (though not by much) which makes it an ideal home base for newcomers.
Annie Zheng/Business Insider
The Culture Trip’s Sinead Schenk has great recommendations for Zamalek here»
With an expansive menu, quality food, and good prices, Crave is one of the most popular restaurants among locals and foreigners. It was so good — and so close to my hotel in Zamalek — that I ate dinner there three nights in a row. One memorable dish is prawns wrapped in crispy fried konafa, an Arab noodle pastry.
Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider
Source: Crave Zamalek
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- A jeweler who makes custom engagement rings took me behind the scenes in a diamond workshop — and it totally changed my opinion of people who spend 6 figures on rings
- Traveling the world for a year showed me real life doesn’t always live up to the hype. These are the most disappointing places I’ve been.
- I visited the Great Pyramid of Giza, and while it’s as incredible as you’d expect for the only wonder of the ancient world still standing, I made a rookie mistake
Source: Business Insider – hjacobs@businessinsider.com (Harrison Jacobs)