Anchorage Greek Festival

We never knew there was a Greek community in Alaska - couldn't be further away from the mother country. Every year, they hold a festival of Greek music, dance and food and this year we got to go and the sun shone as well. We had gyros and loukoumades for lunch. Gyros are flat breads with meat and yoghurt, and loukoumades are deep-fried honey puffs sprinkled with honey and nuts, with sugar and cinnamon. It was all high-quality.

Pictured are some of the dancers who put on an exellent show in traditional dress. The men wore the national costume, the 'fustenella'. The women's costumes were from the village of Ambelakia, in Northern Thrace. Also on show was the charming boy's costume from Corfu. The older dancers are wearing the Cretan costume from Anoghia.

At the end of the performance the audience were invited to come up on stage and have a go at one of the dances.
Pictured here is the current Alaska Senator, Lisa Murkowski in the yellow, strutting her stuff and targetting the Greek vote in the elections next week. About half the commercials on TV at the moment are for various candidates for the elections and we can't wait for it all to be over.

At the end of the afternoon, with warm breezes and bright sunshine, we had just got home when there was a violent thunderstorm, with torrential rain, hail, thunder and lightning. This is the view out the side of our house showing the floods that the rainstorm caused. We don't get many of these in Anchorage but this was a doozie. Then the sun came out again.

Alan & Sylvia