I have been the last days in Cairo, the first proper contact i had with this city. I have to say that i do not enjoy massive cities, i feel lost and stressed. Cairo fulfilled all my fears...the mad drivers in Alexandria are the chauffeur of "driving miss daisy" when compared with those in Cairo. Your life is continuously under threat when crossing a street or walking along, as many of the pavements are little urban jokes. Actually in Cairo there are many traffic lights (not like in Alex), the only problem is that they do not work in the classic green, yellow, red international code...nobody could tell me what this meant:
The first day, after just 3 hours walking around the city, the continuous noise of horns, the shouts, the tides of people and the pollution got me totally exhausted. I thought i was not going to survive in here for very long, but actually the next day my brain learned how to ignore all those external influences and i begun to really enjoy it here. The city of Cairo is really impressive, old and filled with flavour, and no wonder why it was named as the city of the thousand minarets. The first important turistic visit was to the citadel, a fortification on top of a hill that has been since the XIII century to the XIX century owned by Ayyubid, Mamluk, Ottoman, and Khedival rulers. The massive Mohammad Ali Mosque (Ottoman):
As it can be seen, the exterior of this Mosque is absolutely impressive...as impressive are the views from this hill, in here the Sultan Hassan Mosque and Madrassa protruding from the city:
The patio of ablutions is simply maaaarblelous:
The minaret from the patio:
The domes from the interior:
It is a real shame that (in such a grandiose building) it feels more like a touristic attraction than a worship place; european and american women walk around with green cloaks for covering their indecent clothes (for a Mosque it is, almost nobody would think to go to the opera with shorts and flip flops).
Another mosque within the walls of the citadel is the Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qala´un Mosque, built two centuries after the great Mosque of Isbiliah, resulted more charming for me. The exterior view is dominated by a green ceramic dome that corresponds to a late addition:
The texture is roughly elegant in the interior, columns from different origin surround squared plan with no walls enclosing any space:
The simple decoration consisting in hanging lamps draws you closer to the austere origins of Islam:
The Al-Azhar Park is the best green space in the city, this 30 hectare complex of gardens and buildings constructed by the Aga Khan Trust in 1984 is in a hill not that far from that of the citadel. The views of the city from the observatory, the walk around the lake, the channels of water that travel along the paths, the beautiful building of the restaurant conform a delicious island of peace in this chaotic city. Within the park there is an amphitheater for performances, i attended two concerts during the week, one of three Egyptian groups and another of Oriental flamenco...i absolutely loved it :)
I love high places with beautiful views, together with the citadel and the park i had to visit Mohatam, the highest place in Cairo where u can see the real extent of this sixteen million people urb, the 7th more populated metropolitan area in the world and the largest in Africa. The character of this place is quite odd at night: lovers, young people partying, old men with women of light horse shoes (ligeras de cascos), egnabis (guiris or gauris) in touristic buses gather together in front of the impressive views. In there i allowed myself to take some arty pics using the lights of the city :P
Apart of such high places there are another billion places to visit down in the city: the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, Hussein Mosque, el zouk el kalili, Al Azhar University, etc... (this etcetera is quite large, for example in 12 km of a El-oaz street there are 6732 monuments, the estimation is that u would need 8 months full time for visiting all the monuments in Cairo). I promise will come back to it...
