Today's Outing

Today was an interesting day.  This was the first time that I went to the Fish Market.  It is on the Red Sea and the boats come in and bring their fish into this big, open building, where the vendors sell their fish.  The Red Sea is so pretty in the background-so BLUE!  :)

They were selling lots of strange fish.  There are big ones called, Hamour (which I did not get a picture of), that a lot of restaurants here serve, parrotfish, shark, what looked like a garfish to me, also octopus and shrimp. 

 

I bought shrimp.  Then you give it to a guy who will clean your shrimp or your fish and filet it.  Here are pictures of my guy cleaning my shrimp and another one cleaning a fish.  But there are a bunch of guys cleaning the fish on what looks like tree stumps to me.

 

 

 

After this, we went to the Produce market and I got a white melon, peaches, cherries, tomatoes and okra.  They looked very fresh.  That is one thing that I like about here is that I don't think that the produce is trucked very far.  The tomatoes are great, not like the tomatoes that the grocery store at home had-tasteless because they were picking them so early and trucking them from far away (unless you went to a farmers market).  But you don't have the diversity of vegetables  that you have at home. Then we went to the spice and nut market.  To get there, you have to go through a tiny restaurant and out the back door and it is in a strip center there.  It had a lot of spices that I had no idea what they were.  Next time, I will try some. 

 

  The driver brought us home to put our fish away and then we went to lunch.  It was very funny trying to explain to the waiter what we wanted.  I said that I wanted water with lemon in it and the other two ladies agreed to that also.  What we got was a green lemonade drink that had pulverized mint in it.  It was good, but not what we wanted.  A friend kept trying to tell the waiter that we wanted an assorted appetizer platter that we had before that didn't seem to be on the menu.  He didn't understand what we were talking about so we just ordered a few things.  Then, my friend reminded me that I had taken pictures of the food we had last time we came here.  So, I took my phone out and showed him the pictures.  He said, "Ah!" but didn't tell us what it was called.  :)  This is what we had ordered:  Hummus, spring rolls, and kibbeh.

 

 

 

 

And of course, we had to stop at Star Market, the grocery on the way home.  I took a few more pictures.  I am getting a little more comfortable asking if I can take pictures.  So far, everyone has been great!  Although I got shy about asking two older men sitting in the back of their pickup truck selling watermelons. Here is one of the bakers at Star Market:

Here is some produce:

Here is only a small part of the rice selection:

These last 2 pictures are from a different shopping trip to Star Market.  This guy had his animals in the back and they brought his groceries out to him.