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Eating Our Way Around

Eating Our Way Around

The last few days have been mostly spent running around doing silly errands that it turns out you cannot escape, despite being in another country. We have made time to do some fun and touristy things though. 

Although we have mostly been cooking our meals in the confines of our hotel room, the other night we used a super popular food delivery app called "Talabat." They will deliver from pretty much any restaurant on the island. You can enjoy Japanese, Turkish, Egyptian, Lebanese, American, Italian, or any other worldly cuisine in the comfort of your own home (which is CLUTCH during Ramadan). Oh, and I almost forgot: they also deliver from one of America's top gourmet ice cream parlors...Dairy Queen! But, we declined to order Dairy Queen, and instead opted for a Turkish restaurant "couples deal" that turned out to be the maximum amount of carbs you could possibly consume in one meal. One dish was essentially macaroni lasagna, and the other dish was "koushari," an Egyptian dish made with macaroni and who knows what else. And if those two things didn't satisfy your craving for refined carbohydrates, there was also a large loaf of garlic bread covered in cheese. I can't tell you a whole lot about what we ate other than what I just described, but I can tell you that was divine. 

Last night we were invited out by friends to an incredibly swanky restaurant in an equally swanky hotel for "Iftar." For a mere $140, McLean and I enjoyed the company of new friends and food from the largest buffet I have ever seen. It took up one long corridor and 2 other rooms. And that didn't even include the "Dessert Room" (a woman with us accurately described the "Dessert Room" as her "personal heaven"). The "Dessert Room" was laden with mini American cakes, soft serve ice cream, an ice cream sundae bar, traditional Arabic desserts, a chocolate dipping area complete with marshmallows and fruit, and much more. However, after surveying the potential damage, I quickly grabbed random items and bolted before giving myself the opportunity to consume enough calories to last me for the month. Outside the "Dessert Room," the food choices ranged from lamb to freshly made naan to sushi to a salad bar to couscous with camel, and on and on and on. As with our experience with the food from the Turkish restaurant, I can't really tell you what was in much of what I ate, and I certainly can't pronounce it, but once again, it was delicious! McLean and I were so full that we both opted out of breakfast this morning.

At this point you might be wondering why this post is primarily about food, yet I have no photographic evidence of the glutenous food we've been consuming. The reason for this is that we already naturally stand out quite a bit here (I don't cover my head or body and McLean is a fit, tall dirty blonde man who is clean shaven and has an incredible mustache), and I figured that obnoxiously snapping pictures in a rather fancy restaurant would be a bit aggressive for one of our first big dinners. So for now you'll just have to take our word for it. Please just try to hold off judgement as our waistlines slowly start growing horizontally as the posts keep rolling.  

Touring Our Way Around

Touring Our Way Around

Forget What You Learned in Driver's Ed

Forget What You Learned in Driver's Ed