Why now
Prime time in March: 27°C days, dry.
October to April is when walking Islamic Cairo is possible; summer is a matter of early mornings and museums with air conditioning. Ramadan quiets the days and fills the nights, with late openings around Al-Hussein; Fridays close the Khan el-Khalili and most offices.
Best months here: January, November, December. March is not one of them — the label above measures the month against a fixed bar, not against the rest of the year here. Daytime highs, sea temperature and rainy days from three years of Open-Meteo reanalysis; a rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, which is the WMO threshold and not the same as "it drizzled".
The place
Cairo is twenty-odd million people, a river, a medieval city that is still lived in and a pyramid field on the western edge where the desert begins. The noise and the traffic are not a phase; they are the city. It suits people who can accept being a foreigner in the street and who find that Islamic Cairo repays the effort more than the pyramids do.
What you can do
- 01Go to Giza at opening time, enter the Great Pyramid if you can bear the heat, and walk out to the Sphinx.
- 02Spend a day in the Grand Egyptian Museum with Tutankhamun's full collection, then the old Tahrir museum for what remains.
- 03Walk Al-Muizz Street from Bab al-Futuh to Bab Zuweila, with the Qalawun complex and Al-Azhar on the way.
- 04Visit Coptic Cairo's Hanging Church and Ben Ezra Synagogue by metro to Mar Girgis.
- 05Take a felucca on the Nile from Garden City an hour before sunset, then eat koshary at Abou Tarek.
Where to stay · neighbourhoods
Stay in Zamalek or Garden City for a first visit; Downtown suits those who want the city at full volume. Hotels by the pyramids are romantic at dawn and an hour from everything else.
Unusual things
- ◦Ibn Tulun Mosque, the oldest intact mosque in the city, with its spiral minaret, and the Gayer-Anderson House next door.
- ◦The City of the Dead, the Northern Cemetery's Mamluk tombs such as Qaitbay's, where families still live among the mausoleums.
- ◦Dahshur's Bent and Red Pyramids, older than Giza and nearly empty, with the Red Pyramid open to enter.
Day trips
Flight options
Routes come from OpenFlights (historical) and a 2026 route reference compiled from public timetables. Durations are the published schedule where we have it, otherwise a block-time model fitted on measured nonstop flights. Verify schedules with the airline before booking.
Flight.Deals has not measured this route from Lisbon yet, but it does measure Cairo from Madrid (€207 typical).
Entry requirements · IT passport
Egypt visa on arrival US$25 (or e-visa online). Not valid for all nationalities.
Source: passport-index-data, March 2026 (coarse indicator), covering 258 of our 268 destinations for each of 199 passports. Always confirm with the destination's official site.
Airports
Distances are centre to airport derived · nonstop counts are our route reference for 2026, not every flight that exists.
Local transport
- Airport to city
- Uber, 45 min, ~€6
- Car needed?
- No — walkable or good public transport
- Getting around
- Uber and Careem are the answer to taxis that will not use the meter; the metro is cheap and useful for Coptic Cairo and Downtown. The airport is 45 minutes to over an hour by car depending on traffic; book a driver for Saqqara and Giza rather than negotiating at the gate.
- Clock
- 2 hours ahead of Lisbon (Africa/Cairo) derived
- Daylight
- 11.9 hours of daylight in March · sunrise 06:06, sunset 18:03 derived
- Currency
- EGP
Good to know
Central Cairo and the main sites are generally fine, but most governments advise against travel to North Sinai and parts of the Western Desert near the Libyan border; expect persistent touts at Giza and agree any camel or carriage ride in full before touching the animal.
Alternatives at a similar price
Whole trip per person for 4 days from Lisbon in March, then the flight time; estimates, like the total above.
Cape Verde
Hurghada
Seville
Fuerteventura
Agadir
Sharm El Sheikh