EGYPT

If you only make one trip in a lifetime, make it Egypt--the beginnings of modern civilization going back three millennia before Christ. It's not so much what they created, but when. The Egyptians began building pyramids in the Third Dynasty (around 2650 B.C.) when the Greeks and Romans still dressed in skins.

The engineering feats, the exquisiteness of their tomb art, their written language, their medicine, philosophy, astronomy, military technology, their dress, their sense of governance. All so far ahead of the world which would ultimately surpass them--and leave them in their ancient dust.

What a foreigner notices first in the city and in the narrow fertile ribbons along the Nile is how easy it is to imagine the long ago past. The desert colors, palms, gardens, costumes, animals.

And yet, all around, people are clearly grasping for a freer, more prosperous time.