Living in Egypt Series: Walking around Carrefour

The video quality is a little poor because I filmed this while I was walking. Carrefour is a French chain with several branches in Cairo. It is a Super WalMart type shopping center offering shoppers a one-stop place to get everything from a washing machine to a loaf of bread. Carrefour is the anchor store for this shopping mall - Maadi City Center. Inside you are offered the standard fare of extremely overpriced retailers, tourist-trap kiosks, and run-of-the-mill fastfood court that you are probably already accustomed to.

So what makes walking around a shopping center a different experience in Egypt than it is in, say - Kentucky? Well for one thing the crowd. No one in Egypt goes shopping alone. The entire family goes and it is a major event. This makes navigating the aisles slightly difficult.

This is not really evident in this video. We were there on a Wednesday (slow day) and only walked around in the mall area ending up in - of all places: Starbucks.