Shop & Collect
Most souvenirs are bought in the last hour before an airport. A shopping day is the opposite: someone who knows the quarters takes you to the workshops, translates, tells you what a thing should cost, and carries the bags. You buy less and keep it longer.
The quarter beside the pyramids, where the workshops that supply the plateau's shops actually sit. It is the easier half-day if you are already out there for the pyramids, and the one to combine with a morning at the site.
Known for
The route is built around what you actually want to buy, so the length of the day, what it costs and how we collect you are settled in the conversation rather than fixed here.
Khan el-Khalili and the lanes around it have been a market since the fourteenth century, and the trades are still grouped by street — the coppersmiths together, the perfumers together. It is the bigger day, and the better one if you want to see things being made.
Known for
The route is built around what you actually want to buy, so the length of the day, what it costs and how we collect you are settled in the conversation rather than fixed here.
Cairo's craft quarters are not laid out for visitors. The good workshops are upstairs, behind other shops, or down lanes with no sign, and the price you are quoted depends entirely on whether the seller thinks you know what you are looking at. Going with someone who does changes both halves of that.
You pay the shop directly, at the shop's price. We are not going to steer you into a workshop because an arrangement says we should — and if we have not been somewhere ourselves, we will say that too.
Oils, copper, cotton, a cartouche, or no idea yet — say so and we will tell you which quarter is worth the day and what it realistically involves. Nothing is charged for asking.
