Winter Palace: ongoing!

With it being so darned hot, (45ish every day) we're tending to use the buses a lot, instead of walking. That being the case, we haven't been around the Winter Palace area for a little while, so I was a bit surprised to see, when mooching around down there, that they are actually getting on with the job!
Someone, on one of the forums, was saying that the foundations for the new building were going in the other week. I thought at the time that it seemed a touch "previous", but withheld my judgement until I saw it with my own eyes. As it happens, they were preparing the ground for a perimeter fence, which is now up (chain link for Egyptian authenticity, lol) with a lovely row of trees which will mask the fence from view quite soon.

As always, click once on the picture to make it bigger, and again to magnify it.






The ground on the outside of the fence has been tramped down by running a big machine over it, and is all dust. Obviously I had to walk over this to get to the fence to take some photo's, and I came across this........



It's about 2 inches in diameter, and I've no idea if it's still live or not, I certainly wasn't going to lick my finger and touch it to find out!!!!!

Looking through the fence, it's plain to see where the Aboudi shop was, and the back of the "Winter Pavillon" is in more or less full view.






They're knocking down the old WP garden wall, and digging near to the "New" Winter Palace site, and piling the earth onto the lovely lawn where the tower block used to stand.






It is quite fascinating, trying to imagine the new building (as in the huge poster) actually taking shape as time goes on! I'll keep you posted from time to time.