On the walk to the Museum (the big pink building), I had to pass through a police checkpoint, where they looked through my bags and checked my passport. There was also a metal detector, but as I would soon discover, metal detectors are ubiquitous throughout Egypt, but other than in airports they are never used, and you just walk straight through them, setting them off, and nobody cares. The checkpoints were probably relatively new, and in response to terrorist attacks the previous year (2009). I did see significant police presence on the streets.