Nieces

It is fun to see my nieces.
It is even more fun to see my parents being charmed by my nieces
(their granddaughters).
I recall a picture of me at about this age,
sitting on my own grandpa's lap.
He was reading me a book,
and this time Dad is playing youtube videos,
but the generation connection is still similar.

Also it is fun to see my nieces playing together.
The Crocodile Collection is always popular
(lots of different reptile toys at my house!)
as is the dress-up closet
(source of the 'princess headdress' that I bought
at a Renaissance fair some 20+ years ago...)

Smiling for the camera

We went to Pioneer Village
and as I adore dressing up for pseudo-historical-photos,
we had our picture taken.
Sophie likes dressing up, too,
and she was quite enthusiastic about the dress and fan and hat,
but she was very shy around the attendant
(I had to be the one to help her into her costume)
and I have to confess, I was rather amused by the quality of her smile
when I finally saw our pictures.
Sophie's idea of smiling for the camera usually has a bit of a posed quality
but this was a downright grimace.
The serious ones actually turned out better.

Lagoon Bandits

I have always had a great weakness for old fashioned dress up photos.
When I was a kid I always longed to get such a photo taken
at Lagoon's Pioneer Village,
but my parents demurred
(and having seen the prices there, I now now why.)
But this year, when I took the kids to Lagoon,
I was determined to go ahead and have fun.
We all decided to be bandits.
I purchased both a sepia-toned print
and the five digital photos they took.
All were pretty good,
but this was my favorite.
(The digitals remain in color,
and it will be easy to make them sepia-toned in Photoshop if I want).

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.