Police Day Demonstrations

I mentioned that yesterday was a holiday, Police Day- a day meant for celebrating the police? I'm not sure. But you would think the police would at least get the day off. Instead they spent their special day dodging rocks and fighting off thousands of angry protesters. More on that story here.

The biggest demonstration took place at Tahrir Square which is just a few miles from my parents house. It killed me to know that something newsworthy was happening so close to home while we were sitting around watching a movie. So Chris and I begged my dad to let us go check it out. He reluctantly agreed as long we promised not to take any photos.

So we went out for what turned out to be a rather uneventful and lovely walk across the river and over near Tahrir Square. Aside from several ambulances speeding by, we didn't see much mostly because we didn't get close enough to the action. We did witness the abnormally empty streets of Cairo which was almost as newsworthy. They had blocked off traffic and shut down cell phone towers in attempt to break up the protests. It was quite surreal to see the streets so vacant.

I did pull my camera out a few times, pretending to take some photos of the sunset...

And then sneaking an out-focus shot of the riot police in front of the Ministry of Communications.

I tried but failed to find a photo that I saw on the news of several angry protesters in front of this same lion just hours early. You'll just have to imagine Booker and Ike as angry young Egyptian men, cell phones in hand, tweeting and chanting, "Mubarak Go Away!"