Update from Egypt

July 2023. 

If you have not been to Egypt for a while and you go now, you will recognize the amazing antiquities but there may be other surprises for you.

First of all, Egypt takes great care of its famous, but potentially fragile, wonderful antiquities.  (It sometimes amuses me that the only defacing or graffiti on them comes from English or French soldiers/workers who stumbled over them and wanted to leave their mark, but that was over 100 years and a lot more, ago!). The current generation is not only preserving them but equipping the sites to withstand more visitors and give a better visitor experience. 

The Giza plateau, home to the Pyramids now has a much better road network for example, which generally keeps well away from the main sites and yet eases movement for all.   Of course, the yet to open, Great Egyptian Museum is another example of showing off Egypt’s history in a much better way.  More on that in the coming months.

There is work on modernizing the passenger rail network with improvements on many longer distance and inter city routes.   We look forward to the day when the trip from Cairo to Luxor can be reasonably undertaken, reliably by train.   There is work on the Cairo Metro and it will soon extend as far as the gateway to the Pyramids.  A freight railway is being built from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, sort of a parallel route to the Suez Canal – which was famously blocked for a week or so a while back when a ship lost control!

The road network is being improved around Cairo and you may notice an improvement in Cairo’s notoriously bad traffic.  If you go to Alexandria the Desert Road has massive construction ongoing but the journey times are ever improving.

It is good see real infrastructure improvements and replacements as the country tries to better position itself for the future.

The Great Egyptian Museum -latest 

Jun2 2023 – After many delays the latest information is that the GEM will open, at least in part, at the end of 2023.

Where Has The Solar Boat Gone?

February 2022 – If you have been to see the Pyramids since 1982 you may have been in to the Solar Boat Museum, located right next to the largest Pyramid.   It was situation where the Boat was found, in the 1950’s.

Now the Museum and Boat have gone and the view of the Pyramids is unobstructed once again.

Don’t worry, it has been relocated to the nearby Great Eygptian Museum!