Butterfly in the oasis in the desert: Touring our little city

Last week, we went on a bus touring around Yanbu. L. wanted to show us some of the things that she has found in her research about Yanbu. Here we go:

Our first stop was the Yanbu Fish Market. It is on the Red Sea. The aqua water is a beautiful back drop. The fish are very different than the ones we see at home.

This is squid:

This was a big fish that a man caught and brought it in to be cleaned and filleted for a party he was having.

The worker had to heft it up to the counter.

The customer said that he wanted to keep the skin intact and likes to display it on his wall. I assume that he dries it out and has it mounted.

Here we are watching this cleaning process of the huge fish:

Here are some of the pictures along the beach:

This is a boat called a dhow. According to Wikipedia, the generic name of a number of traditional sailing vessels with one or more masts with lateen sails used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region. Some historians claim the dhow was invented by Arabs or Indians, but the majority give the credit to the Chinese.

Then, we went to Old Yanbu. This is the house where "Lawrence of Arabia" lived for a time in Yanbu.

This shop has been in this man's family for 400 years!

These are camel muzzles.

Then, we went to a Shisha (Hookah) restaurant. It is an outdoor cafe with cushioned sofas overlooking the Red Sea. On the weekends, the marina is bustling with activity. We went during the week and it was completely empty. When asked about the shisha, we were told that women cannot have shisha unless their husbands are there to OK it. :) One of the ladies asked why we couldn't do it since we were not Saudi ladies. He told us that the mutawa (the religious police) were there and would not approve. So....we had wonderful food instead!

Great dolmathes, which I normally don't like.