Islamic Cairo

Nearly 3 weeks ago Ann, Lidia and Tamar (an intern from Georgia) visited Islamic Cairo. In this part of the city you can see a lot of mosques in different sizes, ages and formation. Probably one of the most known is the Ibn-Tulun Mosque (shown on the first picture). I found it very impressive because of it’s size and age. All the other mosques I visited before where normal buildings, in the Ibn-Tulun Mosque you can find a big yard inside the building itself. Somehow this reminded me of the Mosque in Mekka, but unfortunately I am not that deep into Islam to really tell the similarity.
So we continued our walk of mosques. At the so called Blue Mosque we where able to climb up the minaret. At this picture you are able to see the mosques, just count the small towers. This picture also gives a good impression how Cairo looks like in the old part of the city, you see a lot of these houses constructed with those brown bricks (maybe they had a different colour before, I don’t know). And of course you can see a lot of satellite receivers.
On the next picture you see all four of us and in the background the Citadell, which is one of the biggest mosques in Cairo.
As we continued our way we passed by a quarter where I actually saw for the first time here in Cairo that people are producing something, in this case shoes. Most of the shoemakers just sit inside of their small factories with doors wide open, so you can see how they work. Afterwards the shoes are transported to wherever by foot, by horse, by motorbike or car…. As you can see the street is really crowded, like most of the time. 
Afterwards we enjoyed a true Egyptian market, but just because of the atmosphere, like 75% of the products you can buy their like shirts, pants etc pp. are made in China. So we just enjoyed the bargaining atmosphere.
It is always interesting when we are walking in streets where normally no tourists go. I mean we always will be recognized as foreigners (especially the girls, for me I am very proud that sometimes when I am going to work with my business dress on people asked me in Arabic for the way or something similar ;-)) but I don’t like most of the tourists here in Egypt and in general, because of several reasons. So I am glad when I can avoid being to close to then. On the last picture you can see an easy way to find the tourists, just follow the cabs.
Sorry but somehow the picture always appear in a wrong order. I hope you will find the discribtion to each photo in the text