I adore Cairo's downtown. Yes it is polluted and dirty and crowded and full of traffic and yes since the revolution even more rules have been thrown out of the window and it becomes genuinely dangerous some days, and yep when you walk the streets you can't help but think of all the blood that has been shed in the past months But oh how I love it. It's so full of eastern promise, the hustle the bustle, the unavoidable signs of poverty, this is a place where the poorest of the poor have smiles on their faces and spend their days working hard, chain smoking Cleopatra cigarettes and joking with passers by. There is the Tahrir area which is the center of the craziness, crossing the road is at its most daunting here... the buildings are huge and the entire square is over looked by the massive Mogamma (register office type building). Then you walk down some side streets and you enter the world of the street cafe's, the air is thick with the smell of shisha and the almost musical sound of the backgammon pieces being shifted around the boards. Old men sit next to young students, foreigners sit next to devout Muslims, artists and poets sit chewing the cud with political activists and AUC students, A tea costs a few pounds and the atmosphere is priceless, it is the perfect place to sit and people watch and allow the mind to wander. Street vendors pass by selling a wide range of products, tissues, watches, shiny Chinese gadgets, nuts, telephone cards, you name it they sell it.
The further you delve the more you discover, on the other side of Tahrir is Garden City, which boasts leafy green streets and beautiful architecture, it;s easy to imagine Cairo as it was in the first half of the last century here and it's just pleasing to see greenery so close to the concrete jungle just a short walk away, life seems slower in garden city and the apartments are just Devine. If you cross the main road you will find yourself in mounira, mounira is not green but it still has it's charm (I used to live there so I am biased), it's a little poorer then Garden City and the buildings are run down but there are the most quaint narrow ally's that have so much character, It is also home of the French culture center which in my opinion is the best culture center ever, they throw amazing parties and have a cute little cafe that sells all of the things normally forbidden (beer and pork of course)
Yup so that was my quick tour of downtown Cairo, it's a lovely place :)
