My Egypt album is finished!!!

Hooray!  It's only taken me a year and a half to do it, but I'm finally done.  I've loved every minute of reliving that wonderful trip, but really, this was a ridiculously slow album.  I guess planning a whirlwind wedding is not conducive to daily scrapbooking, huh?  Anyway, this is going to be a picture heavy post, because I think I'm going to share every single one of these last layouts in this one post.

We visited two mosques during our last two days in Cairo.  The first one was in the old citadel, and is known as the Alabaster Mosque due to the large amount of alabaster used in its decoration.  It was a beautiful piece of architecture.  I have no idea what the religious significance of most of the elements of the building are, but I  was at least able to admire the beauty of the building itself.  The second mosque we saw was the Sultan Ali Hassan Mosque.

Such beautiful, colorful, geometric designs!  We had to remove our shoes to enter each mosque, but weren't required to cover our heads or western clothing, despite the fact that our tour guide warned me that I might be asked to cover up my arms (I think he meant my cleavage but wasn't comfortable saying it).  I did see a few other women who had been put into these long green robes, but no one from our group had to.  We squeezed our visits to these mosques into the afternoon of the day we flew from Luxor to Cairo.  There really wasn't any time alotted for lunch, so our guide jumped off the bus on the way back to the hotel and came back with falafels for each of us.  I don't know if it was because I hadn't eaten in so long, but that falafel was delicious!  I've tried several falafels here in the US since we came back, but nothing has matched the yumminess of that meal.


The next day, our last full day in Egypt, began with a visit to the Cairo Museum.  I think a month would not be long enough to explore the treasures of this amazing museum, and the few hours we had certainly weren't enough.  No cameras were allowed inside the museum, and there were way too many people for me to get a decent photo of the front.  So I made a layout using a backside view taken from our hotel room.  I also used my ticket as an embellishment on this page:

Just driving around the city provided so many interesting things to look at.  (this layout is a QuickQuotes layout that I got at last August's convention... I just waited til now to share it so it wasn't way out of order)

This layout was designed to fit a lot of photos in it.  The following pics are of all those photos.  It shouldn't be hard to see what I mean about there being so much to watch from the bus windows.

 That last, sideways photo shows the entrance to then-President Mubarek's palace.  And in the photo below, those lips you see were on the front of the key card to our hotel room.  Odd, but totally memory-worthy.

From the Cairo Museum, we went to the Hanging Church, which is certainly the oldest church that I have ever visited.  It's the home of the Coptic Church's Pope, and it was beautiful.  It's called the hanging church because it's built over an ancient watergate.

 Our hotel room had a great view.  In addition to being able to see the Cairo Museum, and the site of future demonstrations, we had a wonderful view of the Nile.  In the late evening, the river was filled with the red sails of feluccas, and later, there were dinner boats alight with hundreds of multi-colored lights.

 As you can see, there is some hidden journaling on this layout.  I decided to include a little bit about the revolution and how my experiences in Egypt affected my interest in the whole proceeding.

I also devoted one layout to the wonderful dining experiences of our trip, including the last night when we chose to eat at a local McDonald's to get a break from the spices that are so different from what I eat back here at home.  There are two hidden photos in this layout.  One is of a glass bottled Coke sitting in the window of our boat cabin (I have a special fondness for glass bottled Cokes, and I was thrilled to have one every day at tea time on board our cruise boat).

Well, that's it for the Egyptian album.  What's next?  Wedding albums, pre-wedding albums, and the honeymoon album, of course!  I just hope that I'll be able to get these albums finished a little more quickly than the last one.  Only time will tell, I suppose.  Til next time, I hope everyone in the US has a wonderful 4th.  I'm looking forward to spending some time relaxing with my hubby, who has spent a lot of time on the road here lately.  Happy crafting everybody!