Our Family of 6 visit to Egypt
Our family made a great stopover in Egypt on our way home from a recent trip and I want to give all of the details of how we made this happen. All the places we visited, where we stayed and costs associated with each thing.
Egypt is such a cool place and filled with some of the richest history of just about anywhere else in the world. The age of many of the things we saw is really hard to comprehend. being able to see the pyramids and other ancient ruins of monuments that were built thousands of years ago is unreal. There were many moments in our time exploring that we kept mentioning how it felt like we were walking around in the old testament. This is the place from Genesis where Joesph was sold by his brothers, redeemed his family and settled here. It’s the place of the Exodus where God used moses to lead the israelites out of slavery into the promised land. It’s where Joseph and Mary took baby Jesus to flee from herod death wish on his life. It’s the land of kings and Pharaohs and in just two and a half days, we got to see so much in the cairo area.
Our family of 6 spent the first 6 weeks in 2024 in ministry with four corners ministries in Uganda.
A Place we love and are thankful God allowed us to serve in this capacity for the last month. In planing for our trip I wanted to (as i usually do) take advantage of the travel time to add in a stopover to explore and see a new place. Our flights from ATL to Uganda and back always transit europe and i’ve done a few stopovers there on past trips to Africa but this time I really was interested in going to Cairo.
I began to do some research on prices and ticket options and was able to find a great award redemption on Egyptair. I used Avianca life miles to book these tickets since they are both part of the star alliance and I could easily transfer my Capital one miles that i’ve been earning on my Venture X card to Avianca and book these one way tickets. These tickets cost me 88000 miles + taxes and fees of about $390 for 5 tickets and one infant in lap.
My card of choice for this trips reception was my Capital One Venture X card. It’s one of my favorite cards and it has many great travel perks. One of those main perks is lounge access to a huge network of airport lounges around the world. With this card we were able to freely enter and eat at multiple lounges in multiple airports on this trip alone. This is a huge cost savings for a family of 6 trying eat multiple meals in airports.
If you’re considering this card, I’d really appreciate you applying using my links as this helps us keep traveling
Our tickets to Africa and back were covered under the ministry project but we booked this portion on our own.
Once the flights were booked it was on to finding a place to stay. I began to look at award redemptions and options for hotels but then thought i’d check out airbnb and wow i’m glad i did. I found this great place just a little ways from the pyramids and the photos honestly looked fake. I thought they were for sure photoshopped and we could’t get views that good of the pyramids. I booked this apartment and we were blown away when we arrived.
Check out this great airbnb here
Mohamed, the owner was amazingly welcoming, helped us with our bags and things and he also helped in booking our transport to and from the airport and our driver for the two days of exploring (more on that later). He’s listed as a super host on airbnb and honestly his picture should be the image for all superheats. This was great for our family! The space had enough room for 14 ppl so we just closed off some rooms we didn’t need and made ourselves at home and reveled in the amazing view. Whats also so awesome about this place is the fact that it only cost us $330 in total for three nights. What an amazing find.
We got settled in and decided to go see some things around the area of Giza and grab a late lunch. We stopped at a hole in the wall local shop and had some great authentic Egyptian cuisine and ran to the grocery store for snacks.
Our first full day was Saturday and we got up to one of Mohameds guys making us a egyptian breakfast and then off with another Mohamed to drive us around and help us explore the great pyramids. One of meagan’s only wishes for Egypt was to ride a camel at the pyramids so after exploring the the large pyramids we went out the the panoramic view to get a great angle of all of the pyramids together and that’s where the camels were.
Mohamed helped us find a great camel owner and two boys that were our guides for the ride out to the viewpoint. Meagan and Cruz got a camel, Phoenix and I took one and Gray and Kyrie got on one together. It was such a cool experience riding through the desert on the camels looking out at the pyramids.
We spent a few hours exploring the pyramids area and visiting the great sphinx.
Once we left we took a ride to grab a quick bite for lunch and a few snacks and back to the apartment before going back out for the night.
We took a short rest and met back up with Mohamed for a trip into downtown cairo. I wanted to go into the cairo tower at sunset to see the city. We made it in plenty of time but there was such a long line and things just didn’t move very fast. We made it up to the top for an amazing view but the sun had already set by the time we got up top. This is probably something we wouldn’t take the time to do again during a trip so short.
You can’t come to cairo without visiting the bazaar or markets. there were tons of people and shops selling just about anything you could wish for. We spent a couple of hours walking around the market before we’d had or fill. Our only purchase at the market were a few soccer jerseys for the boys for about $30 total.
We’re always ready to eat the local food when we’re traveling but after spending a month plus in uganda we were so happy to see papa johns and mcdonald’s and gave them our business.
Mcdonalds & Papa Johns were much less than home. All in for both meals we spent only about $30
Day 3 was up in the air what to see and where to go…
We decided to take a ride down to Saqquara and Dahshour to see some of the “older” pyramids and sites.
We got to go inside a few of them and see the burial chambers. It was really cool seeing the hyroglipcis and artwork on the inside of these rooms. there was such detail and each wall was covered in images and writings from antiquity.
One pyramid, the Bent Pyramid, has a LONG tunnel down into the center and then you have to climb a few cases of stairs, crawl through another tunnel to get to the burial chamber that once was the home to a mummified pharaoh. the climb in and back out of the bent pyramid was tough but totally worth it.
I know many people would laugh at spending just 2.5 days in in a place so rich with history and so many places to visit but it was something that was totally worth it for us. we were already coming through the region and were able to easily make the plans we needed. We have great memories and have now visited the great pyramids!
One thing we’ve had questions about was safety in Egypt. There was never any point we felt that it was an unsafe place or people. Overall we felt very safe the whole time. We’re always cautious when traveling with the family but the Egyptians were super welcoming and took care of us so well. I would recommend this type of trip to anyone.
In all we spent $1261 here's a breakdown of the major costs
Airfare = Entebbe to Cairo = 88k Miles + $390
Airbnb = $331
Tickets / experience = $239
Airport Transportation = $60
Tour transportation = $80
Food and Souvenirs = $161
I think for a family of 6 that we got way more value out of the experience that what it cost us. I love taking advantage of short windows to see and do things that otherwise would be very costly or time consuming to do. Are you looking to visit Egypt? A stopover is a great way to see this amazing place!