Opa!

Friday evening, we stopped by Anchorage's Greek -yes, Greek - Festival! It is a fundraiser for Anchorage's Holy Transfiguration Greek Orthodox Church, and it is quite the hootenanny. We went for the food, and stayed for the dancing.

Dinner
There was a wide variety of really, really good Greek/Mediterranean food, as you might expect. There were gyros, souvlaki, and a bunch of different dinner options like moussaka and spanakopita. The best though, was the dessert tent. If you like Greek pastry - and we do - this was nirvana. Only relatively high prices kept us from getting one of everything. We had the best baklava we have every had, and some really good Greek coffee.

Dancing
Two groups of church youth - the little ones are the Stars of the North and the older ones are the Northern Lights - did a variety of Greek dances, and there was traditional Greek music as well. The little ones were absolutely adorable, and seemed to having more fun with it than kids normally do with this sort of thing. The older kids were pretty good, with some absolutely outstanding dancers. The boys got the majority of the glory and got to do all the best moves. This may well explain the fact that this is the only folk dancing program I've seen where the boys wildly outnumber the girls. All the girls get to do is dress up in about 15 layers of clothing and do a little bit of back and forth foot work. They are like the backup singers of Greek folk dancing, so I can see why they wouldn't be too motivated to participate. Of all the older kid dancers, you could tell about 1/3 of them were really, really into this stuff, and the other 2/3 were there because their parents made them do it. But it had tremendous entertainment value, nevertheless. Also, live folk music was perpetrated against the crowd.

Other available activities included a tour of the church, and shopping. A guided tour was available at certain times, but we were not there at one of those times, so we just poked around some. It is a beautiful church with a lot of ornate art. There is a Christian bookstore with lots of books and gift shopping options. You can also shop in the Agora, which featured stuff imported from Greece, souvenir t-shirts, and assorted other Greek stuff. Most prominently for sale is their church cookbook, an impressive bunch of recipes. According to their program, this is the 15th annual festival, and I hope they have many more!