 |
| Buffet Ready and Waiting |
At the risk of sounding totally reckless, I’ve had a sociable week this last week. One of the people I know is leaving for two months, so we had a farewell party. At least, that was how it was advertised, but I think the reality was to test out having some local get-togethers out in the open.
The event was at the Old Palace Hotel,
where we can get a “happy hour membership card”. This card gives us use of the
hotel beach for free as long as we order a drink, and all food and drink is
provided at a reduced price (not restricted to a happy hour at all). Membership
doesn’t cost anything. This is the advantage of the hotels here having only
very few guests. Residents suddenly become their bread-and-butter earning.
People have started using the Old Palace
rather than Bar by the Bridge (earlier blogged about), because several people
were conned by the manager there (my friend is no longer helping them run it
any more either). Also, they promised happy hour prices, but didn’t always
honour them. Currently, the Old Palace Hotel is offering much better and more
honest service.
It turned out to be one of the best days I
have had for ages. My daily swim is to the Old Palace hotel and back (around 1.5km), so I decided
it would be very cool to swim to the party and then swim back (it was held outside,
during the day). This also gave me the opportunity to try out my swimming buoy’s
(which I swim with to make sure the boats can see me) other purpose, which is
as a dry bag. I packed my money, my membership card, and a dress, and swam off.
Twenty minutes later, I arrived. Success!
Everything in my bag was dry. However, I had pretty much double-packed
everything just in case.
They’d laid on a DJ, a huge buffet, and their
animation team with dancers to perform in front of us. The charge was 160 LE for
everything apart from drinks (that’s about eight UK sterling). Everything about
it was great.
They played predominantly Arabic music and
there was a large area for dancing. Quite a few people stopped to watch what we
were doing.
Because I swam to the event, and wanted
also to swim back (I could have walked or got a lift off someone), I had to leave early enough to ensure I got back before it was dark. I don’t fancy swimming in the dark as
I want to be able to see if there are any potentially dangerous fish about.
Also, some fish only start swimming about at night and I didn’t want to be
scared by something I wasn’t acquainted with. Anyway, it was all very easy. I
packed my bag, tied it round my waist, and off I went.
My swim back was an extra fifty metres, so
was probably a bit like a drunken swagger. I’d had only one glass of wine. But I
felt very relaxed on the return swim (despite the full stomach) and the twenty
minutes it took me flew past.
Also, having that exercise made me feel
just a little less guilty about eating so much.
If you want to pretend to be over here in Egypt, I’m providing some links to the Egyptian / Arabic songs I seem to hear most frequently (I hear them also when I’m swimming when I arrive at the midpoint of my daily route). Dance, enjoy, and imagine you are on the beach!
Ya HabibiThere are many more, but three will do, I think. However, I can't resist this one, which was in the top twenty downloads in Egypt in 2020. I've never heard it played, but it made me laugh when I saw it while searching about for the songs I had heard. It's called....
No comments:
Post a Comment