Shopping

A very popular place to shop in Riyadh is the Kingdom Centre. The bottom 3 or 4 floors is a shopping mall. It also houses the Four Seasons, apartments, office buildings, coffee shops, a mosque and who knows what else. In order to leave our apartment, I must be covered in an abaya (the long cloak/gown) and a hijab (the scarf covering my head). Not being covered would result in the religious police and the regular police stopping us, and arresting me, and possibly Nate. While at first it was kind of a pain, I now find myself feeling almost naked without it. Because I am not Muslim, I don't have to constantly wear the hijab, but find that I receive a lot of strange looks without it, so I usually wear it wherever we go. The entire top floor of the mall in the Kingdom Centre is ladies only, where I could actually take my abaya and hijab off, as do all the women there. It is one of the few places in Riyadh where women are allowed to work. They actually have armed guards at the elevators and escalators to make sure that no men try to sneak up.