I took some photos on the way which were all from the moving car with my little point and shoot that has a mark on the lens I can’t get rid of but I will put a few on and you will see that this area is quite different from where we live on the Giza Plateau. Heliopolis was actually a planned development that occurred in the early part of the 20th century and was proposed by a Belgian called Baron Empian (who subsequently lived died and is buried in Cairo) who wanted to build a garden city in the desert to help solving Cairo’s intense demand for housing. Commuters would travel to work in the city each day by tram. Empian’s dream was brought to fruition by British planner Sir Reginald Oakes between 1905n and 1922 and is based on a grid of streets with greenery and open spaces and originally even a racecourse (which is now an amusement park, I’m pretty sure it’s the big one called Cairo Land).
The streets, with well-grown trees, older buildings with sort of Islamic-looking facades or very modern ones, have a variety of apartment complexes and modern shops, fast food restaurants, classy looking cafes and nightclubs, are quite wide and the traffic, at least today, was reasonably under control, although parking is still chaotic and 2-3 deep and hard to find. But often you look down a side street and see a mosque at the end of it, even though this area originally had a large Christian and Jewish population. I think it might still have a reasonable high Christian population as there’s definitely a higher proportion of women without scarves than elsewhere. (From an article I read there are now only about 200 Jews in Cairo, almost all elderly).
We had a meal at Tikka, a fast food chain that serves all sorts of stuff so we can both get something we like even though it’s mostly meat, we shared the salad bar (not quite like a western salad – we had potato salad and coleslaw, sliced cucumber, and green bean and white bean salad with onion and in a sort of sweet sauce (I wish I knew how to make it coz I really like it, they serve it at Pizza HWhile we were eating all the traffic stopped while a “VIP man” came through under police and army escort – Mohamed thinks the Minister of Defence as the Ministry is just around the corner from where we were. We went past it later and there were soldiers and special police everywhere in squads and singles. Several hundred at least I would have thought so I guess the Minister was indeed in residence.
Anyway it was nice outing, good weather and clear skies and we saw some good furniture although dearer than I had hoped but I think that it is what Mohamed would like, it certainly would make the office look good when the Ministry comes to inspect.
As I said I’ve given you some photos but they are not great quality as they were all taken while we were moving over the bumpy road. But they’ll give you an idea of what I saw today.
So it’s goodnight from me, take care
Lots of love
Lyndall
A load of bananas passes us on the Round Road
This one looks not quite finished but certainly occupied
One of the unfinished apartment buildings along the Round Road
One of the apartment buildings along the road where residents have chosen to decorate in different colours
A large mosque under construction in conjunction with a hospital
And only a couple of hundred metres away a large church is also under construction
A mosque at the end of the street and some residual water from yesterday's rain, it looked like they might have had more than we did
Looks like yet another fast food place is opening soon
The tramway but no tram, by the time I saw a tram my battery had gone flat
The shops along one of the main streets
The view from home is still great though
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