Images of Cairo

I saw so many fascinating things when I was in Cairo, but unfortunately most of them were at night so I didn't take nearly enough pictures. I'm especially bummed that I didn't get more pictures when I was walking around the area my guidebook calls Islamic Cairo (which, frankly, is about as redundant as calling a neighborhood "Catholic Rome"). I thought it was going to be entirely touristy and Disney-esque, but I couldn't have been more wrong. I went for a long walk one evening down the main street, and with the exception of the area right around the market, I was one of the few people who was obviously western. It felt like stepping back into an earlier century: ancient and crumbling buildings, stately mosques, rutted dirt roads, children walking with donkeys, tiny shops with men sitting around smoking shisha, the call to prayer from the muezzin echoing through the streets, etc. Alas, I have few photos to show for it. Still, I managed to get a few. These are from the Al-Azhar Mosque (incidentally, one of Cairo's nicknames is "the city of 1,000 minarets", which I would say is an understatement):







This is the Spice Market:



And of course, the obligatory shot of the Great Pyramid. The Giza pyramids--which are only about 20-30 minutes from downtown Cairo if there is no traffic--were actually a bit of a disappointment. Not that there was anything wrong with the pyramids themselves, but the conference organizers planned an excursion from 6:00-8:00am...which was fine, except the pyramids didn't open until 8:00am and our guide couldn't talk our way past the guards, so all we could do was stand in the cold and look at them from afar.