It is Saturday evening after a long day of interviewing candidates for next year's TCLP program.  I can hear the call to prayer echoing through the city through the sliding doors of my hotel room.  You hear this sound everywhere.

You would not know it is St. Patrick's Day here in Cairo.

Yesterday, after our visit to the pyramids and the sphinx in the morning, we took the short trip back into the oldest part of Cairo to visit a couple of Coptic Christian churches,  Taking pictures is forbidden almost everywhere and, even if it weren't, it is too dark inside to get a decent picture.  We saw icons (in this case, paintings) dating back to the 15 century A.D.  One of the TCLP alums from Egypt is a Coptic Christian.  Because it is now the Lenten season, they are all fasting and are not eating any foods that contain meat or dairy products.

After lunch in a typical tour-guide-chosen restaurant, we made our way through the crazy traffic to visit the Citadel of Salah din and the mosque of Mohammed Ali.

We stepped into an older mosque that reminded me so much of the mosque in Cordoba in Spain.  It is lovely in its simplicity.

This is a view of its court yard with a minaret in the background.  As you gaze across the skyline of Cairo, you see minarets everywhere.

In the outer courtyard of the Mohamed Ali mosque is the fountain where Muslims would wash before entering the mosque to pray.  It is carved of alabaster.

Although the mosque is no longer used for services, everyone is required to remove their shoes to enter.  It is surprising how cold marble is on bare feet!

The mosque itself has 12 domes.  The inside is ornately decorated.  The carpets on the floor are original from the time it was built.  Although this mosque is not formally used for prayer services, Muslim visitors often pray here if it is during one of the five required prayer times during the day.

This picture is dark, but you can see the Arabic calligraphy for Allah to the left of one of the corner domes.  The stained glass windows are much smaller than those in a Catholic church, but there are many more of them (or so it seemed to me).

This mosque sits on the top of a hill inside the Citadel of Salah Din which was constructed to protected the Arabs from the invading Christian knights on their way to Jerusalem.  The view of Cairo from this area is beautiful; however, the smog/sand was really obscuring the view by late afternoon.

This is a view from my hotel room.  You can see the Nile in the background.  The hotel sits at the tip of an island in the middle of the Nile.