"This is the beginning, but not the final... " a Egypt Travel Page by zanzooni

She started out as "Hollywood" and then it morphed...the name I gave Chelsea after she took her sister's sunglasses and began wearing them. She truly thinks she's a glamorous girl, and she really is quite exotic looking.

This was our first outing together as a family. Not my idea of fun, but when your with a 14 year old young lady, who really doesn't get to enjoy places like this to often, you have to go with the flow. The infamous "CityStars" mall in Heliopolis, Cairo, Egypt. It was pretty upscale with the usual trappings of a mall. I've never seen so many people in one mall, and I live near Potomac Mills Mall in VA, which even at Christmas time, doesn't seem to have as many people as this place does on a Friday night. Being the Muslim holy day, everyone is out to all hours of the evening. The mall stays open until 2am on the week-ends, and until 12:00am the rest of the week.

This has to be one of my favorite pics that I took out of over 300 pics. I was on the bottom floor of the mall waiting for Jaeda and Chelsea to do what ever it was that they were doing.

I started snapping pictures of people as unobtrusively as possible. There was only one instance that one woman actually ran and hid her face from me when she saw what I was doing. I was lucky with this shot. I happened to turn as this woman was walking down the stairs with her daughter. She descended regally, and I noticed her burka and matching hand bag. The burka was studded with small rhinestones that glittered from the lights. Mesmerized, and at the same time wanting to capture the moment, I hurried and got this shot as she walked towards me. She was clutching the hand of a small child, pulling her tightly to her, as the girl was overwhelmed but excited by the strange noises and people surrounding her. What I love most is the guy behind them. He looks like the guys you'd see on the streets of DC, or for that matter, many American streets. The Buka is not required of women in Egypt and I was told that women who dress in this fashion are generally from Saudi Arabia. The vast majority of women in Egypt do wear the hijab, showing their full faces, and many wear the galabeya.

I was never so happy as when I was leaving Cairo to Alexandria. We did the road trip twice, and the second time, I took the train back, but that's another story. It was so hot in Cairo. So dusty, so dirty, so polluted, I was beyond miserable. All I was doing was running back and forth from the Embassy and trying to get rid of "Cleopatra's Revenge", which wiped me out for almost the entire time I was there. The welcoming of the cooler winds blowing off of the Mediterranean Sea was like Nirvana whispering hello to me.