aliholli

Day at sea. Gulf of Oman and Persian Gulf. WOOP.

Mini golf!

"OMG IT'S THE CAPTAIN"

"Do you do selfies?"

As you can see, I was still in shock that I had actually asked the CAPTAIN that.

I think HE was a bit shocked too.

But I came up the stairs and walked right in to him. He couldn't possibly escape. Ha.

I sweet talked our cabin steward too!!! He made me a towel penguin!

MUSCAT day 2

We room serviced breakfast in bed today because we had to be UP and OFF the ship.

Sultan Qaboosh's Mosque was only open to the public until 10am.

It was well worth the alarm call. What a wonderful gift to celebrate his 30th year of reign.

In 1992 Sultan Qaboosh decided Muscat should have a mosque to celebrate his 30th year of reign.

Quietly imposing from the outside, this glorious piece of modern Islamic architecture was a gift to the nation from Sultan Qaboos to mark his 30th year of reign. The main prayer hall is breathtakingly rich. The Persian carpet alone measures 70m by 60m wide, making it the second-largest hand-loomed Iranian carpet in the world; it took 600 women four years to weave.

Woman had to dress modestly and basically cover up everything.

It was so very modern, scrupulously clean, fanatical sweepers were everywhere, this was a beautiful building to be very proud of, we were very impressed.

Then we headed back to the souk and oh my goodness frankincense gets stuck in your teeth.

We bought some to chew and some to burn and some elephant cushion covers because I'm running out of space at home for eleornaments and STILL we picked frankincense out of our teeth.

We found JOOP!!!! and had a glass of mango juice but still it lingered.

We walked back to the ship via a ghastly, graphic, smelly, fish market but STILL couldn't free our gums of frankincense. What powerful stuff. I don't remember Mary and Joseph having this problem.

"And it came to pass that Joseph reached for another toothpick..." :)

MUSCAT, OMAN.

Next stop, MUSCAT.

One of the oldest cities in the Middle East and capital city of Oman.

And only recently opened for tourism.

Husb, Pingu and I were up early and ready for the other HopOnHopOff type bus, the BIGBUS.

It soon became apparent that no one was in fact getting off. They were on for the 2 hour tour. If you didn't like your seat well tough because no one was moving. With this in mind (like, if we DID get off would we actually be able to get back on again?) we stayed on for an hour.

I enjoyed it, but Husb was right, the bus was too full, the people were too big (!) there were too many cars, which meant too much waiting at junctions, which meant too many diesel fumes and too much diesel smell, which meant we were all too hot... but I enjoyed it.

We passed the souk.

We went down a road full of car showrooms where all the shiny new cars were sat in front of a backdrop of mountains...

the local football ground...

and the Sultan's personal helipad,

and the Muscat Opera House.

It was so different to Dubai. Look how low the buildings are. No high rise buildings are allowed, the maximum is 8 stories and all buildings must be white or beige brick.

It definitely felt like Real Arabia.

Look-there's me upstairs on the bus :) haha

This was the new road up to the Hotel where some of our cruise passengers were going in order to strip off and loll all day on its private beach...It was a hefty price....just to sunbathe.

This was where WE got off...at the beautiful Sultan's Palace, Al Alam.

The palace was built over the site of the former British embassy where there used to be the stump of a flagpole in the grounds: the story goes that any slave (Oman was infamous for its slave trade from East Africa) who touched the flagpole was granted freedom. The palace today is largely used for ceremonial purposes as Sultan Qaboos favours a quieter, seaside residence near Seeb.