We woke up at around 6:30 am and had a quick coffee on the balcony of our hotel before heading up to the roof top for breakfast at around 7:30am. Our favourite breakfast lady hadn’t arrived yet, so we sat for a few minutes and watched the traffic starting at the pyramids. The loveliest lady arrived not long after us, and brought us a very similar breakfast to the day before. The breakfast was definitely the highlight of our stay at Jimmy Pyramids View hotel. 

We headed back down to the room and had another coffee before checking out of the hotel around 12:30. 

We had the insane idea to walk to the Giza metro station, about 2 hours away from our hotel in Giza (right by the pyramids), or so google maps said….. So we set out with our backpacks to make the journey to Giza station. The walk would actually end up taking us about 4 hours, but we saw the REAL Cairo.  

Even though it was 40 degrees celsius, we actually enjoyed the walk quite a bit. Maps.me directed us through a very questionable route to Giza station, and we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of Cairo’s garbage city, a place where locals sort all the waste from the huge metropolis of Cairo. Not really having another option, we walked for hours through this garbage waste land. It was a truly eye opening experience. Whilst I would NOT recommend this route to anyone, I do not regret our journey at all. 

Cairo’s garbage city is very efficient, and has a recycle rate that is much higher than most developed nations. 80% of all the waste in Cairo is recycled, and that is really an incredible rate. They feed the organics to pigs (which we saw first hand). 

We walked for a few hours through this area of refuse, refuse from the very touristy area we had just left. The journey was eye opening, exhausting and overwhelming. We had just left the most touristy area of Egypt or maybe even the world and now we were being confronted with the wastefulness of that type of tourism. We saw stacks of tuk-tuks, chairs, bicycles, everything! I even saw the identical ketchup packets that had been served with our dinner…

The last 45 minutes of the walk was through a residential area that I could not help but feel unsafe in. I saw a family portrait studio with wedding photos and a baby photograph where the infant was wearing a bullet belt and holding a gun, as well as a toddler with a knife. 

It took about 4 hours to get to Giza metro in the end, and we were toast. We took the metro to Ramses Station where our sleeper train would be leaving later that evening.