Souk Psych-out

Henry was nonplussed at wall of gold behind him.

Yesterday, we toured around Dubai with Farm Grandpa and our Aunt and Uncle Foerster who all arrived to this glorious desert on Thursday night. One place we visited on Sunday was the souks in Old Dubai.

First we hit the Gold Souks:

Mom, Greta, and Grandpa in front of the typical gold souk display.

Not-so-typical; a gold baby pacifier.
There was also a gold baby bottle, but I
don't have a picture for that one.

This is the thing Henry was standing in front of in
the first picture Not really sure to make of this, (Is it armor? a dress?
costume?)but it's made out of minute woven chains of
gold and gems. Pretty incredible, not to mention heavy!

Do people really wear gold shirts? And giant gold bib necklaces? From the looks of the offerings at the gold souk you'd think this was a much more common thing than I have observed in my life. Frankly, Henry was unimpressed, the rest of us were mostly confused.

After the gold souks we walked around the spice souk, and when I say that there was every kind of spice imaginable there, it's not an understatement. I mean really:

You wouldn't find half these things in Target.

Literally WALLS of spices. It smelled like Indian food tastes: explosive. Seriously, if you stay there too long, your nose might just melt from all the different scents. We found everything in those souks from cardamom to calcium to coriander to cumin to coffee to cinnamon to sumac to sesame to za'atar to saffron to aniseed to allspice to- you get my point, right? Anything you could name was there. I haven't even started on the ras al hanout or rosewater, baharat or basil, salt or sage, cayenne or chilli, ginger or garlic, OR the spice mixes for mexican or masala, biryani or BBQ, or kebab or curry. Or the mysterious blue power Greta got on her nose that we still haven't identified.

It made me REALLY hungry...

The thing that kept me from eating all the food stuffs was the men hawking there wares every time you passed them. They would walk right up to you, hold out a laminated card with whatever they were selling printed on it, and say, "Ma'am? Ma'am you need purse? Come, come, see look we have-" and because they were mostly Indians and Iranians it seemed they talked at the speed of light: "Pursesbagsshoeswatches-verynice-newjewelrywatches-come come! Look see! GucciPradaHermesValentino!" All the time we were walking through the market, every five minutes a different dude would walk up to us and repeat their manic market mantra, ""Pursesbagsshoeswatches-verynice-newjewelrywatches-come, come! Look, see!"

It was thoroughly exhausting.

All in all though, it was a beautiful day outside and we didn't mind walking around, even if  pushy marketeers approach you from all sides. There were so many interesting things to see, I haven't even mentioned the mattress souk and the utensil souk and the toy souk so I don't think that that day was a total waste of time.