May 5 Muscat, Oman

A short trip down the coast and we arrive at the capital of the sultanate of Oman, Muscat.  Big Bus set up shop right at the gangway so we bought our tickets (once again we could charge them to our shipboard account) and took the two hour tour.  We saw nothing that inspired us to get off the bus until the end when we visited the local souk.

Muscat has a nice natural harbor, ringed by hills.  And atop each of those hills is a fort watching over the harbor.  This was the fort looming over Nautica during our stay.

This is not a picture of Nautica, but rather the royal yacht.  This yacht holds fewer passengers but probably costs more.  It is currently the world's largest super-yacht.

 Traveling on the Big Bus, all of our pictures were taken from the second story observation deck where we were seated.  Many of the pictures were taken while the bus was moving.  Most of the time we shot in continuous mode, with 5 or 6 pictures of every item of interest.  There was a lot of photo editing required for this port.  Cynthia takes a lot of pictures.

Road art in Muscat

 Dolphins visit the coast of Oman, leading to several dolphin themed statues along the corniche.

 The Oman crosswalk guy appears to be striding along, and in my mind, is whistling.

 The Royal Opera House

 Omanees sneering at a tourist

 Oman has a long coastline with nice beaches.  On a Saturday you can see they're in high use.

 Since women can't swim in the ocean there's not much usage.  Here's the only guy we saw in five miles of beaches. Oman appears to be a place where you want to be male if at all possible.

 

A stretch of mangrove swamp along the coast

 Volcanic rock, just like Fujairah.  Everything that wasn't irrigated was grey and dusty.

 The Parliament building with the tallest clock tower in the country.

 Right across the street from the parliament was a flock of goats.

 Part of the Sultan's home

 We did visit the souk in town, but only stayed about 20 minutes.  Oman was very hot, 37 degrees Celsius (which is easy to convert to Fahrenheit -- 98.6), the narrow souk passageways were crowded, and even though there were no smoking signs everywhere, most shops were burning incense.  A short Big Bus ride back to the port and the wonder of modern air conditioning.