Annona

Another new for me and a very strange fruit; we bought it yesterday. It is called in Arabic قشطة – Eshta, that is cream. Its English name is Annona. The plant belongs to the same family as pawpaw.



Each fruit consists of many small segments with a small hard seed inside each segment. The taste is nice, light sugary. No special flavor was detected. Nevertheless, it is very expensive over here.

Well, I’ve tried the new fruit and returned back to my favorites. Annona won’t be among them.

Tannura dance

Tannura

Have you ever seen Tannura dance? It’s spectacular and the music is very beautiful! Moreover, it has some strange effect on me: my head starts spinning and waging !

Lucky me… recently I attended a party where organizers invited a band of artists. Among the performances was the Tannura dance. By the way, Tannura is an Egyptian folk dance derived from the whirling dance performed as a Sufi religious practice. The dancers are men only in large skirts who constantly spin. They spin for a prolonged period (can be up to 40 minutes of continuous spinning). In this dance, they actually do not do anything but spinning but you cannot take your eye off them.

My cell phone allowed me to record almost the entire dance. But to be able to upload it here I had to compress the file. That is why the quality is low. Nevertheless, it gives an idea.

Marsa Matrouh

Last week we spent in Marsa Matrouh – this was my first visit to Matrouh.

Three hours on a bus and you are there. A beautiful place with fine white sand, clean turquoise sea, little to none tourists. The water is calm with small ripples and gentle current. I spent hours of swimming and was not afraid that the current take me far away as it frequently happened in Agamy or Zomoroda (other cities on the North coast of Egypt).

What is also important - the temperature there is around 5 degrees (Celsius) less than in Alexandria - nice break from the heat of Alex. Pleasant warmth, light breeze, and no, pardon me, sweating.

Frankly speaking, I cannot understand why people choose Hurgada or Sharm for summer vacations. These places are for winter breaks. In summer time the best place is the North coast of Egypt.

My husband' company has guesthouses located all over Egypt. We stayed in Matrouh in one of them. I have to say that the staff of the guesthouse was not used to foreigners and my arrival blew them away. They checked and re-checked my documents telling to each other: “heya mish masrya – heya agnabya” (she is not Egyptian – she is a foreigner). However, the documents were all in order and they left us alone to enjoy the place.

Here is the view from our apartment.

Beach. Empty…. What else you need to relax?

Rocks in the sea serve as a natural wave breaker. That is why the sea is so calm over here. And they look very dramatic.