My Favorite Place in Cairo

Show of hands who thinks this is going to be about a donut place.

Yeah yeah, y'all can put your hands down now. Because you're, surprisingly, wrong. I know! Go figure.

Saturday, Kevan, Shon, and Kirsten and I went to the Citadel. And guess what! I still don't know much about it. We weren't interested in hiring a tour guide. We'll do that another time or read up on it before we take the kids there. No sending me hate mail about my missed educational opportunities; it's not my fault tour guides are boring.

So as I was saying, we went to the Citadel, home of the Muhammed Ali mosque (see! I learned something!)(just don't ask me who he was)(though I'm pretty sure it's not the boxer). He has a really cool mosque. Really, it was just gorgeous. I am a fan of great architecture.

This is the front of the mosque:
And one of the sides of it. Aren't those columns beautiful? I love me some good columns. And those round lights hanging down? So pretty.
This is a close(r) up of one of the many intricate iron windows:
And a shot of the ceiling inside one of the arches with the chain from the light hanging down from it:
A view of downtown Cairo from the outer wall of the Citadel. Hint: not fog. The Citadel is on a hill just outside of the downtown area. That narrow tower you can kind of make out just left of center (no singing Suzanne Vega, please)(ok, you can if you want, but don't make me hear you doing it, please)(and no need to tell me about it either)(please) is Cairo Tower, which is on an island in the Nile right in the main part of the city. It's maybe 2 1/2 miles away. Looking out over the city, it really reminded me of San Francisco, except colorless.
This is an umbrella from a snack cart just outside the mosque. I was thinking maybe Utah could adopt it as their slogan.
In order to go inside the mosque, you go around the back and enter a courtyard to get to the entrance. This is the clock tower over the courtyard. Kirsten showed off one of the two facts she knows about the place when she told us that they (I don't know who "they" are, probably the people who say you can't swim for an hour after eating) got the clock from the French in exchange for the obelisk in Paris, but then they never could get the clock to work. Pretty though.
This is the courtyard from the entrance to it. The structure in the middle is where worshipers can wash before praying.
I looooove this picture. Clearly, I am enthralled with symmetry. This is looking down one of the walls inside the courtyard:
To provide a little scale (Kevan's six-feet tall)(when he stands up straight):
The back of the mosque from inside the courtyard:
Another corner of the courtyard:
Sigh. So delightfully symmetrical:
Ok, fine, I'll stop with all the pictures of basically the same thing. Now we go inside the mosque. Look how well the lights are all lined up! Symmetry obsession aside, aren't those lights cool? This is taken from just inside the entrance, looking towards the front of the room:
Another shot of, er, basically the same thing:
A look up at part of the ceiling:
One of the stained glass windows :
The main chandelier in the middle:
And another look up towards the ceiling:
When I took this picture, I was sitting on the floor just past the middle of the room, over to the right, and looking back towards the entrance:
And this is zoomed in on the door more:
As we were stepping back outside, I was approached by one of the many souvenir vendors, and when I told him, "La, shukran" ("No, thank you"), he said, "You speak Arabic bery {sic} well!" Again proving my theory that an extensive study of the language is completely unnecessary.

Anybody who's coming to visit, listen up: we're going to the Citadel. And if you get the chance, see what you can find out about it before we go, 'k? Thanks.