Cairo Tower

Cairo is a very touristic city. Its streets and buildings are full of stories and secrets. I'll try to make use of my temporal residence in Cairo and visit as many interesting places as time permits. To begin with, I decided to visit the Cairo Tower.

Cairo Tower is a well-known landmark in Zamalek (AKA. El Gezira) which is a small well-connected island in the Nile River, near downtown of Cairo, Egypt -my homeland.

Amany -my wife- and I arrived half an hour before the sunset to watch the day scene as well as the night scene from above the tower. Because we are not VIPs, we had to wait in a long line for the elevator, which has room for 6-8 adults. Amany found the arts graved and painted on the inside mural of the tower very interesting; they represent the different regions in Egypt with some of their traditions. In the elevator, the operator welcomed us and played the 40-second message he repeats all the day "This tower consists of 66 floors, and stands at 43 meters higher than the great Pyramid of Giza. It was inaugurated in the presence of Abdul-Nasser, a former Egyptian president, in 1961. At the 65th floor (others also consider it the 14th, because only 15 out of the 66 floors are usable) there's a slowly-rotating restaurant where you can have lunch and enjoy the panaromic view of Cairo". I have to say the elevator exceeded my expectations with the high speed and the comfortable acceleration.

By the time we reached the surface of the tower, the sun was already gone, but we still were able to view the beautiful scene. I dropped a coin in the old telescope hoping it might work, but it didn't. I thought the radius of the tower is much larger. The circular strip available for people to circle the tower is hardly 2 meters in width. At the altitude of 187m, we could see the Nile River, El Tahrir Square, El Mokattam, The Opera, October Bridge, ghosts of the pyramids, and many other things we could not identify. I tried to spot El Maadi but it was a big failure.

After taking a few pictures, we went down the stairs to reach the rotating restaurant. We prayed El Maghreb next to our table before placing the orders. I tried to be very slow doing everything in the restaurant since I wanted to measure how long does it take to make a complete circle around the tower's axis. It took us around two hours. It was a little bit more expensive than I thought, but it was worth it. There was an even longer line for taking the elevator down. But we bypassed it since restaurant's clients have the priority.

I'd like to brief you about the history of this tower. The historian Gamal Hammad says that CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt (son of Theodore) sent 6 million pounds to Abdul-Nasser as a bribe to influence Abdul-Nasser's stance of the Algerian case against the French occupation. Hence, the Cairo Tower is considered the largest and tallest "NO" in history since the president Abdul-Nasser refused to change his stance towards this sensitive Arabic case, and instead of using this large sum for improving the much-needed infrastructre of Cairo, he based this tower to remain as a figure reminding Egyptians of their dignity no matter how much they are in need.

I do recommend the Cairo Tower for everybody to visit!