Muscat, Oman

Our two day trip to Muscat (capital of Oman, refer to map at left) was exhausting to say the least. Thursday morning we woke up at 4 AM to catch our plane. After loading on the plane and arriving in Muscat we checked into our hotel. Amazing thing about Muscat is that it is so much more green than Qatar! Qatar is super desert. All of it is sand, sand, sand. Muscat however had trees and plants, along with sand and mountains. It was really amazing to that in a mere 1 hour flight the scenery could change so drastically. Anyways, we checked into the hotel and tried to find somewhere to eat. We finally settled on the hotel restaurant where we ate something boring, so boring, I don't even remember what it was. We then proceeded to take a dip in the pool until the souq opened. The pool was so nice and the weather was beautiful. The air in Muscat is more humid than Doha, but the air isn't as hot. However, the sun was unbearable. After chilling in the pool for a bit we went off to the souq! And wherever you go, I'm pretty sure the souq will be the same. It was a bit open building you walk into and there are shops everywhere. And the Arabian Sea was right outside, and a blowfish that was puffed up had drifted ashore. It was a bit odd. Anyways, inside the souq there are people everywhere! (and we saw a feral cat...) The stores are ususally scarf stores where you can buy the giant scarves to wrap around your shoulders, or little ones to wrap around, say, your neck. I'm pretty sure we bought about seven scarves that day. My mom gets sucked into buying everything when the people are like, "Come feel the scarf!". We stopped in a few silver/jewelry stores because mom was on a hunt for something. We were just walking along and all of a sudden there was a store full of necklaces and shiny silver things everywhere. So we walked on it. There were so many things to look at, but Daniel and I were content with rummaging through a huge bin of rings to find some we liked. I ended up with a hand decorated silver ring with colorful designs on the top. After that we kept on walking and went to the shoe store! After trying on billions of pairs of shoes my mom & I decided on matching (ahh! the terror!) black sparkly slip ons and she she got another red pair. I wanted the silver pair, but they didn't fit. Daniel then went to get his haircut. I'll let him share that with you. On our way out we saw some silver shoes at a store! So pausing to try on many a pair, I finally decided on an Aladdin-looking silver pair. :] That night we went back to the hotel and crashed since we were super tired.

The very next morning we woke up for our 7 AM tour. We met the tour guy out front after checking out of the hotel and grabbing breakfast. The tour van was a 4WD made for rolling through uncharted territory. Which, we did, oh we did. We started off by driving out of the city.

TO BE CONTINUED.