Old Market, Al Sahaba Mosque and Farsha Café: Sharm after the heat goes

There is a point in a Sharm El Sheikh holiday, usually around day three, when the sea has been swum and the desert has been driven and somebody says they would like to see the town. There is a standard answer to that, and it costs €17.73: a four-hour run to a church, a mosque, the Old Market and a café built into a cliff.

It sits in the city tours category — 12 trips, from €7.47. The tour is good. But two lines buried in its small print decide whether it works for your particular group, and neither is on the photographs.

The two rules that catch people out

Farsha Café has an age limit on part of itself. From the operator’s own information:

access to the lower level of Farsha Café is restricted. […] However, you can still visit and enjoy the upper level of the café together with your children without any problem Under the café’s own policy, children under 16 and single guests are not allowed on the lower level.

The lower level is the part everybody has seen in photographs — the terraces cut down the cliff face with cushions and lanterns and the water below. And here is the sentence that matters more, from the same description: to avoid the queues below, the tour “head[s] straight to the second-floor terrace”.

So on this trip the age limit separates nobody, because nobody in the group goes down there. What it removes is the terrace from the photographs, and it removes it from everyone. If that particular view is why you are booking, ask which level you will be sitting on before you pay — not at the door.

Pushchairs are not permitted, and the listing says the tour is not suitable for wheelchair users. The same listing names “baby strollers” and “baby carriages” under what is not allowed, and states the tour is not suitable for people with mobility impairments or for wheelchair users. That is the operator’s own statement, and it is worth taking seriously: a café built down a cliff is steps, and the Old Market is uneven ground. If mobility is a question for anyone in your party, ask the operator directly what the route involves and get the answer before you pay, rather than at the kerb. We do not know more than they have written, and on this subject guessing is not harmless.

What the mosque actually is

Most people arrive expecting something old. Al Sahaba is not old, and that is more interesting than if it were.

The foundation stone was laid in January 2011. Work stopped during the revolution, resumed in April of the same year, and the mosque was inaugurated on 24 March 2017. It stands on 3,000 square metres, holds around 3,000 people, carries two minarets of 76 metres, and its roof rises 36 metres. The Egyptian architect Fouad Tawfik Hafez designed it for no fee. Egypt Independent

So the building in the photograph at the top of this page is younger than most of the hotels on the coast, and it was built deliberately in the older styles — Ottoman domes, Mamluk-style minarets, Fatimid detail — rather than in the style of its own decade. Once you know that, the thing to look at changes. It is a piece of very confident contemporary architecture doing an impression of six hundred years ago, in a town that mostly does an impression of nowhere in particular.

It is also a working mosque, not a monument. Visits do not happen during prayer.

The dress code, in the operator’s words: “shoulders and knees should be covered”. In practice women should expect to cover their hair as well. The same listing says that if your clothing does not meet the code, suitable cover-up clothing is provided free of charge at the entrance — but take your own scarf anyway. It is one light item in a bag and it removes the entire question.

The tour visits the Heavenly Cathedral, a Coptic Orthodox church, in the same four hours. A mosque and a church on one outing is a fair picture of Egypt and a better one than either alone.

What is included, and the line at the end of the list

Included: hotel pickup and drop-off, a guide, the mosque, a walk through the Old Market, and Farsha Mountain Café.

Then, at the end of the same list, sits a line about extras outside the programme — which reads like an exclusion rather than an inclusion, so check on the booking page which column it really belongs to. Read both columns on the booking page yourself. What is certain is stated plainly elsewhere on the page: drinks and snacks at Farsha are bought on site and are not in the tour price. You are paying for transport, a guide and an hour of table time; the tea is yours.

See the four-hour city tour and its options

The cheaper way, which nobody at the hotel desk will mention

You do not have to buy the guided version to see any of this.

| Option | What it covers | |---|---:|---:|---:| | Farsha Café private transport (there and back) | a car to the café and back, no guide | | Private trip to Old Market & Al Sahaba Mosque | the market and the mosque in one stop | | City tour: mosque, cathedral & Old Market | mosque, cathedral and market, no Farsha | | City tour: Old Market, mosque & Farsha Café | guide, church, mosque, market and about an hour at Farsha, from €17.73 | | Farsha Café & Soho Square night out, with driver | Farsha and Soho Square, with a driver | Prices and ratings for these options change daily; compare them on the city tours page before you choose.

The top line is a car that takes you to the café and brings you back, and nothing more. The Old Market and the mosque stand next to each other, so the second line covers both in one stop.

What you lose by going cheap is the guide, and the guide is the part that makes the mosque legible rather than merely large. Check one thing before you pay for that, though: the listing names its live guide languages as English and Italian, and nothing else. What you gain by skipping it is your own timing — and at Farsha, timing is the whole point.

Go for sunset, and understand what that costs

The café is open from the middle of the day and runs late. Its terraces look out over the water from the Umm El Sid clifftop in Hadaba, about ten to fifteen minutes from Naama Bay, and the reason anybody goes is the hour around sunset, when the light goes and the café’s lights come on.

Which means everybody wants the same ninety minutes. On a guided tour you arrive when the coach arrives; the itinerary allows about an hour at the café, so ask before you book whether you will get a rail-side table, and check on the booking page whether the visit includes watching the café’s sunset lights come on. If that view is the thing you actually want, the argument for the transfer gets stronger: you go early, you sit where the café’s rules let you, and you stay as long as you want.

The Old Market, honestly

It is a market, and it sells what tourist markets sell: spices, lanterns, cotton, alabaster, football shirts, perfume described as oils. Prices are negotiated. If that sentence makes you tense, this is not the part of the evening for you and you should treat it as the walk between the mosque and the café.

If it does not, it is the only place in this town where you will be spoken to as a person rather than as a room number, and an hour there after the heat has gone is the most Egyptian hour available within a taxi ride of the resorts.

The tour is described on the booking page as “a relaxed sightseeing experience with time for photos, walking, and enjoying the main landmarks”. That is an accurate description and a low bar. Nobody is going to tell you the history of the souk.

When we would not book it

If the terrace on the cliff face is the reason you are going — this version does not go down there, so take the transfer and go on your own, as long as nobody in your party is under 16 and you are not going alone, because the café’s lower-level rule applies then too. If somebody uses a wheelchair or a pushchair, because the operator has already said it does not work. And if you only have one free evening and you came for the sky rather than the town, the desert is the better use of it: the Bedouin evening and the stars runs about eight hours and ends under a telescope.

With smaller children, the market at dusk is easier than a restaurant and much easier than a boat — that and the other short evenings are in Sharm El Sheikh with children. And if what you want is simply to be driven somewhere and left alone, the 22 private tours start at €7.47 and will do exactly that.