City Plaza Hostel - Cairo - Reviews & Contact Details

Located in the old part of town, no taxi driver knows where the City Plaza Hostel is and for good reason. The entrance is like something from a horror film with rubbish strewn everywhere and the most unsafe lift you could possibly imagine. If more than three people get in the lift at a time, then you will be sure to hear the deranged screams of the kebab shop on the ground floor “THREE ONLY”. Apparently the lift breaks down often which is not surprising when you see where the lift cables are attached to the roof. So a broken down lift (The hostel is on an upper level) doesn’t matter you say. Well, just wait until you get a glimpse of the stray cat ridden bloodstained rubbish dumps that are the other levels of the building. You really, really don’t want to take a walk through these. When you get into the hostel things don’t improve much. Our room with its own bathroom was really one room with one part sectioned off for the bathroom. I hope you don’t mind listening to the sounds of your partner going to the toilet. Keep in mind that our toilet didn’t flush but on the plus side, the shower sometimes did. At least we didn’t have workmen knocking on the door at 12:30 to make “improvements” to the room like the couple next door to us. Also, not all the rooms have TV yet. The staff are very friendly and will be happy to book a tour for you. I suppose I would be happy too if I was getting a kickback from the worst tourist trap tours you can imagine. Imagine a day where your driver takes you everywhere except where you want to go and keeps dropping you off at tourist shops where you are pressured to buy trinkets you don’t want or need at inflated prices. There is a real kickback culture in Egypt and I have never seen it as apparent as on this tour. At one point, had to pay for and tip 3 other guides we neither wanted nor needed and it ruined our experience of the Pyramids. Needless to say after spending some time at the City Plaza Hostel, we wanted to get on the internet and book a real Hotel for the rest of our trip to Egypt. Unfortunately, one of the staff members was always on the Hostel computer looking at Pornography so it took a while to get a booking. But in the end, we did manage to book another hotel and left City Plaza early. You should see the photos of us when we left the hostel, the looks of joy are priceless. But don’t take my word for it. I felt so passionately about my bad experiences at the City Plaza hostel, that I’ve created a photo gallery of it for you all to view. Here is the link. http://www.majhost.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=205035