Vol 71 Michele Day 3

On the 3d day of Michele's visit we enjoyed a well deserved sleep-in. We had lunch at one of my favorite restaurants, Turkish House. It's not really Turkish food, it's just owned and operated by Turkish people. The menu is very Middle Eastern.

We had their appetizer plate. From the top of the plate we have humous, chili salad, olive salad, baba ganouj, taboula and moutabel. So delicious. The salad at the top of the photo is called jarjeer. It's arugula with a pomegranate dressing and it is awesome. The bread they serve at Turkish House is the best flat bread in the city, hands down.

I ordered the grilled hammour for Michele because it's one of the dishes my friends always have. She declared it yummy. She picked it almost clean. That's fresh mango juice and strawberry juice in our glasses. Fresh juices are cheap here so I get to drink them all the time. My favorites are watermelon and lemon-mint.

I believe I have mentioned before that Oman has a large population of Indian laborers. Well, Ruwi is where most of them live. Every time I mention I want to go to India someone jokes that all you have to do is go to Ruwi High Street on a Friday night. Friday is the one day off that most Indian workers have together so Ruwi really comes alive on a Friday night.

Naturally I took Michele there on a Friday night.

For fun I showed her a grocery store.

It all seemed fairly normal until we reached this section.

I don't know what the hell happened here but no one seemed in any hurry to clean it up. It seemed as though this crap had been lying around like this for quite some time. In the middle of the grocery store. Nice.

Michele got a kick out of the name of this very popular processed cheese product.



We bought a bottle of rose milk for Michele to try.

Next stop was the shopping center I buy most of my fabric at. 2 floors of fabric shops selling beautiful silks, rayons and cottons at stupid cheap prices. These pieces are for fancy dresses. Michele was trying to get me to buy this heavily sequined, beaded and embroidered blue fabric to make a new dress to wear to weddings and balls. "You can't keep wearing the same dress" she said. Granted, this fabric was gorgeous but I've only worn my dress twice. I didn't buy the fabric.

The thing about the Indian population in Oman is that it's mostly men. Their wives are back in India. So you're wandering around at night in a crowd of Indian men. They're all happy and laughing.

Every now and then we would see a few women. Michele asked these ladies for a photo while shopping for Indian bangles for Chloe.

There are so many jewelry stores in Ruwi selling outrageously beautiful stuff.

This set is gold and enamel.

We ate at Pizza Hut that night. I know, I know! I'm supposed to take my guests to places they can't go to at home but Pizza Hut had put up signs all over town advertising their new cheesey-bite fondue pizza and I had to have it.

Nanuk and Puddles slept together that night. I slept as best I could beside my snoring sister.