Exploration

For the past two days I've been walking around Cairo trying to get my bearings on where things are and practicing at crossing streets (which is much more exciting than it sounds).

Yesterday I wandered around in the Sahafiyeen and Mohandiseen districts on the west bank of the Nile. Sahafiyeen, the region around Ahmed Urabi Street, is primarily small shops and restaurants. Not particularly interesting, really, except that it features all four of what appear to be the major professions in Cairo, listed in no particular order:
1. Private streetsweepers. Every restaurant and shop has an employee who will continually sweep, hose down, dry off, and resweep the area of sidewalk in front of the business. Most of them appear to be told to either get rid of the trash or get it off of that business' piece of sidewalk, leading to piles of debris accumulating on the border between adjacent businesses. The other main repository for this trash is the street along the curb, necessitating the employment of...
2. Public streetsweepers. Cairo apparently has a MASSIVE guild of streetsweepers who actually dispose of the trash swept off the sidewalks. They wear somewhat ludicrous green and purple uniforms and can be found everywhere.
3. Police. They're everywhere, and it's usually difficult to tell what they're doing. About half are ostensibly directing traffic, but there is very little traffic-directing and far more standing around chatting except at the very largest intersections. This helps the traffic situation to no end. Most of the other half are stationed in front of upscale establishments for security.
4. Taxi drivers. They're everywhere. Enough said.

Mohandiseen is the area surrounding 26 July Street. At this point the street is divided into three sections: a central section for thru-traffic with corridors to either side for access to side streets. These side corridors have an above-average level of parked or broken-down cars - of the four lanes on each side only one is being used. Sheep and chickens are kept on the sidewalks. There is a noticeable lack of police of any sort.

Today I wandered around Zamalek and southern Gezira, then crossed the river to the east side to look at everything on Tahrir Square. I was hoping to take some great pictures of all the various buildings in this area, but a ban on photos that I had been told applied to bridges and military bases apparently extends to also include anything remotely interesting. However, I've gotten some good stock photos of everything I saw.



The Mogamma. Absolutely massive building on Tahrir Square. I walked a lap around it, and there is a pretty solid ring of police watching it. I'm not sure how effective they would be at preventing a terrorist attack against the building, but I'll be damned if they don't do a good job of keeping people from taking pictures.



The Egyptian Museum, a very beautiful red building framed artistically by palm trees. A very cheerful man offered to help me across the street to the museum, but couldn't take me for two hours, during which time there was a very nice shop I should take a look in. I declined his very kind offer.



And, of course, the American University. This is actually just the one building, but several more buildings, and in fact entire campi, are scattered around a few blocks around Tahrir Square.