Cairo - from Egyptian Museum to El-Tahrir Square
Here's a view across the Nile to Cairo's eastern suburbs (from Zamalek in the direction of Nasr city and New Cairo city). The pink building is the Egyptian Museum, a storied institution treasured for its Egyptian antiquities but occasionally notorious for its lack of appropriate care for them. The Nile Ritz-Carlton is a luxury hotel whose efforts to live up to its lustre you can check out on Cairo Scene; and the white building obscures El-Tahrir Square. Its giant roundabout is a traffic hazard.
El Tahrir Square was the central rally point for the 2011 'Arab spring' rebellion against Hosni Mubarek's 'strongman' regime. The government tried to make protest harder by closing the train line. Mubarek's toppling led to Egypt's first democratic elections in 2012, but the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi was removed by a coup d'etat in 2013, when he was legislating to make his presidency permanent.
Morsi is still in jail, and in December 2018 was going to be faced with testimony against him by the 90-year old Mubarak, who said that he needed permission from the military and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Sisi seems to be trying to make Egypt even more of a dictatorial regime than it was under Mubarak, but the economy is slowly improving.
Cairo - from Egyptian Museum to El-Tahrir Square
Here's a view across the Nile to Cairo's eastern suburbs (from Zamalek in the direction of Nasr city and New Cairo city). The pink building is the Egyptian Museum, a storied institution treasured for its Egyptian antiquities but occasionally notorious for its lack of appropriate care for them. The Nile Ritz-Carlton is a luxury hotel whose efforts to live up to its lustre you can check out on Cairo Scene; and the white building obscures El-Tahrir Square. Its giant roundabout is a traffic hazard.
El Tahrir Square was the central rally point for the 2011 'Arab spring' rebellion against Hosni Mubarek's 'strongman' regime. The government tried to make protest harder by closing the train line. Mubarek's toppling led to Egypt's first democratic elections in 2012, but the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi was removed by a coup d'etat in 2013, when he was legislating to make his presidency permanent.
Morsi is still in jail, and in December 2018 was going to be faced with testimony against him by the 90-year old Mubarak, who said that he needed permission from the military and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Sisi seems to be trying to make Egypt even more of a dictatorial regime than it was under Mubarak, but the economy is slowly improving.