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Our visits to Cairo have always been exceptionally enjoyable.
This year we are looking forward to making that pleasurable journey again, to help the Philatelic Society of Egypt celebrate its 90th anniversary.
Many of you have been seeking information about the arrangements, so here is the detail to date, provided by Jon Aitchison, our Programme Secretary, in
conjunction with Dr Sherif Samra and Mike Murphy:
The Circle is arranging a trip to Cairo to coincide with the Philatelic Society of Egypt’s Continental Exhibition that runs from September 9-16 2019.
The exhibition is FIP recognised, commemorates the 90th Anniversary of the PSE and also recognises the 150th Anniversary of the Royal Philatelic Society London.
This message tells you about current arrangements for the visit and for entering the competition, should you wish to take part.
The exhibition is being held at the Cairo Opera House Exhibition Centre in Zamalek, at the southern end of Gezira Island in the centre of Cairo. We have sourced
three hotels within a few hundred yards of the venue that can currently be booked at discount prices on websites like
www.booking.com,
www.trivago.co.uk,
www.hotels.com,
www.tripadvisor.co.uk, or
www.ebookers.com.
Our main nominated hotel is the 4 star Novotel El Borg, which is literally a few minutes’
walk from the
venue and from the Cairo Tower. This can currently be booked for about £85 a night for a double room/two people including breakfast.
If you would prefer a more luxurious hotel, the 5 star Sofitel, on the southern tip
of Gezira island, is about £110 a night; or if on a budget The Nile View is around £60 a night. This latter is a
permanently-moored floating hotel on the Nile so is a bit like staying on a cruise ship.
Prices quoted here are all for double rooms including breakfast but single
rooms can also be booked at lower rates. Although this arrangement – with members booking their own accommodation - may result in colleagues staying at different hotels,
it is our intention to offer a daily get-together at one of them or at a nearby venue to discuss exhibition events and potential excursions. There are, of course, many
other hotels available and you are welcome to stay wherever you want.
The main airlines flying to Cairo from Heathrow are British Airways and EgyptAir, but there are also flights from regional airports and other countries. You can book
cheap flights through most comparison websites including those shown above or through companies like
www.dialaflight.com, which can also book hotels. Return flights are
currently available for around £400. It would make sense to book your flights and hotels now because the later you leave it the more it will cost and availability may be
restricted. You generally do not have to pay for the hotels until much later, or even when you are there, and most sites offer the ability to cancel without penalty.
Several excursions will be offered during our visit. Please see the attached document
(Click HERE)
sent by our friends in Cairo which shows some possibilities including a five-day Nile cruise from Luxor to Aswan.
If you are interested in the cruise please contact Essam at essam@elnakhiltours.com because
you will need to arrange dates before you
book your return flight (the exhibition closes on Monday September 16). As well as the other tours shown we are hoping to arrange our own visits to the new Great Egyptian
Museum, where the Tutankhamun treasures are now on display, and the Al-Azhar botanical gardens in Cairo. Don’t worry about booking the day tours at the moment; we will
sort out some that suit all of us when we know who is going. We can also arrange airport transfers if desired.
As far as the exhibition itself is concerned, the organisers will welcome entries of 1 to 8 frames of 16 sheets for Traditional Philately, Postal History, Postal Stationery,
Aerophilately, Revenues, Thematic Philately, Maximaphily, Open Class or One Frame. Entries can be competitive or non-competitive, and the cost of entry is £30 per frame.
Each entry will receive a certificate and medal. If you are not able to attend in person we can arrange to carry your entry there and return it to you without additional cost.
For details of the rules of these classes please refer to the exhibiting section of the ABPS website at www.abps.org.uk. We hope that a lot of our members will enter: it is a
great way of promoting the ESC and Egyptian philately.
Please do consider making the visit and/or entering an exhibit. In either case it would be a great help if you could email Jon Aitchison at
britishlocals@aol.com to let him
know or phone him on U.K. 01279 870488. Jon can hopefully answer any questions you have about the trip or exhibiting. Once again, if you are coming to Egypt, please make your
hotel and flight reservations soon while there is plenty of availability and before prices go up.
We hope to see you in Cairo. It will be a very friendly gathering – Egyptian hospitality is rightly renowned worldwide - and great fun!
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