Egyptian Fancy Dress Night

On one of our tour boat nights we all dressed up in galabeeyahs (the traditional Egyptian robe) or something similar and had an Egyptian buffet meal.
Pictures of the meal are gone (alas)- there was a lot of eggplant and cucumbers and bhabha ganoush (spelling?) and some dish whose name I can't remember composed of rice and lentils and pasta all mixed up together.
Here is our entire tour group in the cruise ship lobby.
They had a "pro" take it and he sold the prints the next morning.
In this case, it was $3 I'm glad I spent.

I quite like my galabeeyah which is nicely embroidered and a bit better constructed than the average shoddy stuff sold in the bazaars. I also bought a belly dancer's hip scarf with jangles and a beaded cap but after trying them on and looking in the mirror I decided firmly that I would keep those for my nieces to play dressup, thank you. (They survived the theft and have joined my costume collection in the spare bedroom closet.) So I asked one of the nice housekeeping staff to help me tie my hair up in a plain scarf, which he did. (All of the housekeeping staff were men. I rarely saw women out working, or even selling things in the market, though there were plenty of women out buying things.)

Charlotte in the ship lounge with cruise pals Sandy, Tina and our guide, Eman (her robes were velvet and gold, the real thing).

And here's the "professional" cheesy portrait by the stuffed camels. One is smoking a hookah pipe, the other a camel cigarette. Of course.

I must say, though by the end of the cruise my Introvert Self was dying for more time alone, it was jolly to go on a trip with a group where I had people to talk to, help take pictures of me (and share theirs), and eat with at meals. Usually my trips are so very solitary, and I end up eating granola bars in a dark hotel room at the end of a marathon day at an archive somewhere. I might go on a guided tour again- but ONLY to a country or place where I am not an expert or I would go mad with the small amount of photo time at the art/historical sites.