Cairo Tower – Wednesday 29 Nov 2006

Tonight we went to look at the Cairo Tower in Zamalek. It took for bloody ever to get there. I guess we were going through rush hour traffic, but seriously… we can walk there in about 50 mins from our place and it took us over an hour to drive there!

We paid £60 pound to go up. There were different prices depending what you wanted to do – from just looking at £60, to having a meal up there for £100. We only wanted to look so just got the basic ticket. The girl at the counter seemed quite upset that all we wanted to do was look… I wonder if she works on commission…

We got in the lift and a lift man pushed the button for the top… took about 5 minutes to get up there then we had to walk up about a dozen steps. At both bends in the steps a guy was stood pointing us around the corner (coz we had so many other choices!!)

It’s not that high, only185m. The view was pretty cool – you can see quite a ways from that high up. All the lights of the city seem to go on for miles. You can see all the traffic too... it was just wall to wall cars!

Of course there were the dodgy characters up there pointing out sights that you can see for yourself then asking for baksheesh. I was trying to figure out my camera and this guy kept trying to get me to come look at something – I kept saying ‘I’m Fine’… eventually he wandered off. Meanwhile Chris got hit up by some guy pointing out a soccer field (which blind Freedy could see) then asking for baksheesh.

My camera has a ‘night mode’ but unfortunately I couldn’t get it to work very well. I got a couple of good pics when I used the image stabiliser but most of our pics are either too dark, or too blurry…

We could almost see our apartment. We could see the shooting club that we live next door to (the lights are like the ones at the MCG!).

It’d be an awesome view during the day, but then you run the risk that the pollution would be so bad that you wouldn’t be able to see more than 10m.

I’m not convinced it was worth £60, but then I guess that’s only about $15 which is about what you’d pay at home for Rialto.