We slept pretty late our first day (we hadn't gotten to our hotel until almost 5am) and then made our way via rental car down to the Matrah corniche (seaside). First we went to a park where there is a huge statue of an incense burner on a mountain. I remember going here with Sabrina in 2000 and eating cotton candy…but it was closed! Instead, we bought some Pepsis and people watched in the park for a bit. Lots of Omanis and Indians. Not mixing exactly, but at least they were together in the same place, which is probably more than you can say for most of the Gulf countries!
We then walked to a seaside fort (little ones are on top of all of the peaks in Muscat) and headed to the Matrah souq, which is a fairly small market along the corniche. I always like going there because it smells like Frankincense, which is one of my favorite smells in the world! Justin wasn't super impressed though I don't think and we only did a quick walk through. Then we headed to the Al Boom Restaurant at the Marina Hotel. I hear the hotel itself is crap, but the restaurant is about 6 stories up and has some outdoor seating on the balcony. I went here for dinner last time I was in Muscat and thought it was awesome to sit there at sunset, look at the corniche, and hear the call to prayer from the dozens of surrounding mosques. HOWEVER, this is winter, not summer, so sunset is before 6, which is when the restaurant opens. Whomp whoooomp :( So we missed sunset, but at least we got to take some nice shots of the corniche. After the 'pre-dinner snack,' we decided to go to an all you can eat place called 'The Great Kabob Factory.' It may have taken over an hour to find it (roads in Muscat are set up ridiculously and nothing is really mapped) but it was worth it! We each got 6 kabobs/starters, then a vegetable dish, a bean dish, and a rice dish. You've got to go hungry, but for $12/person or whatever it was, even if you weren't that hungry, you'd probably get your money's worth! After that, we went to the Grand Mosque to take some night shots, which was cool, and found some brand new highway through the mountains (of course not on the GPS) and drove that to some random town. Good stuff.
The next day I woke up in time for breakfast (barely…thanks to jetlag?), but only to discover that I had a terrible sore throat. I was not happy and slept a bit more after breakfast and generally whined and laid around long enough to make us have another really late start. When we left, we decided to try the incense burner park again, but the gate was still up! However, we saw some sneaky Indians climb the fence and walk up. This seemed like the best idea ever, but as we were about to start climbing, someone started yelling at us. Turns out there was some type of guard shack that had people in it. Of course they let the Indians go, not us. I asked the guy when the park would be open and he said 'Never! The Sultan has prohibited it!' Don't really know what was going on up there, but I guess it was unsavory enough for them to close it down. It's too bad, because I thought it was really cool before. Thus, we ended up sitting in the main part of the park with Pepsis again.
There were lots of Indian men traveling in packs of 3 and taking awkward photos of each other. This entertained us for about 2 hours, which gave me some time to rest, and then we headed back out. We went to Muscat Gate first to take some pictures, which was cool until we saw some dude sitting on a bench with a giant gun sitting next to him. We tried to convince ourselves that he was a guard of some sort, but he did not look official and nowhere else did we see guards with guns. This was the only weapon we saw the whole trip, but it was enough to make me get us out of there! Of course Justin thought it was necessary to take pics of this dude from afar, which I was not too cool with, but I guess it's ok since he didn't get shot. Then we moved a little farther down the road to the Sultan's palace. I visited the palace in 2000 and I remember you kind of wandered down a street and it was just there behind a gate. NOW, however, they built an entire complex around it and it is pretty impressive!
We stayed there until sunset, when all the mosquitos came out. They loved to swarm Justin's head for some reason, not sure why…but at least there's no malaria there. For dinner, we went to a South Indian restaurant up the street from our hotel called Woodlands. This was definitely the highlight of Justin's trip. His dinner cost about $10 and mine $1. Very good though, I'd agree.
The next morning we headed to the Grand Mosque, which was built only a few years ago. I had tried to see it when I was in Muscat in 2007, but there had just been a cyclone, which had flooded it and the world's largest carpet was off being cleaned, so it was closed. It was pretty impressive! Very new and clean (all white), but also traditional styling. In addition to the world's largest carpet, it also had the world's largest chandelier.
We then got on the road and headed south on the new highway to Ras al Jinz, just past Sur, where we would spend the night. We stopped at a giant sinkhole along the way where there were 3 Asian girls swimming. Stuff I'd read said that women (and men to some degree) should cover up when swimming in random public places (i.e. not at a beach or hotel), but these chicks were in straight string bikinis. HARAAM! (FYI, this is an Arabic word we've adopted during our travels -- and basically we just use it to talk about people who are doing inappropriate things.) What made it funnier is that an Omani couple came with there baby and went to the far side of the sinkhole. Justin thought they were scared of them and their haraam-ness.
Next we stopped at Wadi Ash Shab, which is a somewhat dry river bed. When we went there was a fair amount of water in it though. The plan was to take a hike to some pool you can swim in and a cave, but it was late and I was still sick, so we just drive around for a while. It looked amazingly similar to the 2 gorges we went to in Morocco last Christmas (aren't we worldly?) and also had random graffiti, like last year's favorite: 'COUSCOUS.' 'Bob Marley' and '50 Cente' were popular here. From there, we moved on to Sur, which we thought was pretty close to Ras al Jinz. Not really, it was like an hour away, so we got to the Ras al Jinz Turtle Resort just after dark. There was nothing else for probably at least 40 minutes in any direction, so we had to eat their dinner buffet. It was ok…and it cost $25 each! LAME. I think they charged even more than usual because it was Christmas Eve. Did I mention it was Christmas Eve? I thought since last year we were in Marrakech and did nothing at all Christmas-y on Christmas that we should do something special this year. While watching giant sea turtles come ashore to lay eggs is in no way a Christmas tradition, at least it was something that I heard was pretty special.
The first turtle tour was at 9pm. I was quite annoyed to see a crapload of people were coming with us. The hotel only had maybe 15 rooms, but others could pay as well. We went out in the first group of 15-20. It was about a 15 minute walk from the hotel to the turtle beach (any closer and we'd disturb them) and about 30 seconds in this little French kid puked on the ground. Pretty gross. We then sat in silence and the pitch black while the 3 guides scouted out the various beaches. You could see just about every star, so that was cool. Eventually, they took us to see a turtle that was heading back to the ocean. Apparently she had tried unsuccessfully to lay eggs and was abandoning her plans for the night, so we got to see her make her way back to the water. The guides then pointed out a baby turtle hatchling guy trying to make his way to the water as well, but our presence seemed to be confusing him, so one of the guards picked him up and said he'd let him go once we were gone and we all went back because our time was up! They are pretty strict about how much time people are allowed to spend on the beach each night. This was cool, though I'll admit that it did not blow my mind as expected. I told Justin I wanted to go back for the 4am tour, but he was pretty anti, as 1) he was skeptical of this whole turtle thing to start with, 2) the 9pm tour wasn't that spectacular, and 3) it would be at 4am. I convinced him though and at 4 we headed out with a much smaller group -- maybe 10 people? This was already a bonus. We got to see a few more big mama turtles this time, including one that was digging her hole and successfully laid her eggs. Me, Justin, and another girl also watched one little guy slowly make the trek to the water. It must have taken him over a half hour and then he finally got swept away by the waves! …Except then a seagull immediately swooped down and grabbed him!! :( Not cool. We're hoping he freed himself and got back into the water, but I guess that's nature and explains part of the reason that only 3-4 turtles survive for each thousand eggs laid. Not good odds for these guys.
After the turtles, we headed back to Muscat to spend a few hours at the Hyatt. The cheapest rooms at the Hyatt are about $350/night, but for $25 you can use their pool and facilities, so we thought that would be a nice way to spend the rest of Christmas. It was about 3 by the time we got there though, which was a bit too late since the sun was already so low in the sky, but we made the best of it! First we went to the beach where, since it was low tide, you could walk out really far with only your feet getting wet. There were tons of starfish in the water, which was pretty neat. When the waves would come in, sometimes the starfish would land our feet, which was slightly gross, though generally pleasant. After hanging out there for a bit, we went to the pool and acquired some pool noodles. This pool was awesome because it had a lazy river connected to it, which meant there was a current that would take you around in a big circle and then back into the pool. Justin and I found about 20 different ways to swim and/or ride the pool noodles around the lazy river and did this non-stop for about 2 hours. By the end, there was no one else in the water with us…it was only in the low 70s by this point, and I'm sure everyone sitting outside was pretty amused by us, but we didn't care because it was AWESOME. Again, for dinner that night, we headed back to Woodlands.
The next morning we headed to Dubai! We'd wanted to drive, but there were numerous issues with trying to take a rental car across the international border, so we took the bus, which was like $12. Driving takes about 4.5 hours, but it took us over 7 on the bus! There was some woman on the bus who didn't have the proper documentation so she held us up on both the Omani and UAE sides of the border. Luckily the bus had left at 6 in the morning so we slept most of the way… Also, I should point out that on Omani buses, the front of the bus is for women or families and the back is for men. Justin was fortunate to be able to sit with me in the family section, which wasn't too full, or else he would have been jammed with tons of other people in the back.
When we got to our hotel, they said our room wasn't ready, so after complaining (just a little), they upgraded us. We were supposed to have a 1-bedroom apartment, which we still technically had, but the one they put us in had 3 bathrooms! It didn't really make much sense, but we didn't complain! The next day, we started off by heading down to the Dubai Marina and Jumeirah Beach Road, which is known for its impressive cars. We got metro day passes, which were reasonably priced and were able to travel all around the city, which I had not remembered was so spread out! After Jumeirah beach, we headed to Burj al Arab, which is sometimes described as the world's only 7 star hotel. It's about $75 to even have lunch there, so we didn't go in, but we got to see it from the outside and take some nice photos around sunset.
Finally, we headed to Burj Khalifa, and Dubai Mall, which is right next to it. Burj Khalifa is the world's tallest structure and was much more impressive looking that we were expecting!
We ended up eating dinner in the food court, which was amazing…but it makes sense considering Dubai Mall is the largest mall in the world! It has an ice skating rink, a huge aquarium (containing the world's largest piece of acrylic), and an indoor waterfall, in addition to 1200 shops. After dinner we went outside to watch the show at the Dubai Fountain, which has 15 different songs it uses for light and water shows. We saw two of them that night -- very impressive!
The next day we checked out some of old Dubai. First we went to the gold souq, where there are hundreds of thousands of dollars of jewelry hanging in every shop window. From there, we paid 25 cents to take a traditional style boat (dhow) across Dubai creek to the textile souq, which is the Indian area of town. Had we not *just* been in India, this would have probably impressed Justin more, but if you're in the UAE and need Indian clothes, jewelry, or food, this is the place to go! For dinner that night, we went to an Indian restaurant called Gazebo. The food was pretty good, but the atmosphere, which was otherwise very swanky and posh, was killed by two things: 1) All of the staff were wearing white hairnets, and 2) They had a 5 song Britney Spears/Backstreet Boys loop on the whole time we were there! Very odd, but a tasty meal.
We spent the morning of our last day dune bugging in the desert. Sabrina and I did this on Christmas Day, way back in 2000 and, while I had somewhat enjoyed it, I would have been perfectly happy to never do it again. See…I am a scaredy cat and it just scares the crap out of me. However, I knew it was something that Justin was excited to do, so I sucked it up and tried to have a good time! We were picked up and driven about 45 minutes away into the desert, where the guy did a little bit of dune driving in the Land Cruiser. Then he popped us into the buggy and Justin followed the driver through the dunes. I actually don't think it was as scary as I'd remembered it being before and actually enjoyed myself…with a few exceptions! There were 2 big dunes where the guy would go up on a really sideways angle and both times we got stuck in the sand. The guys would dig out our stuck wheel and then the other driver would make Justin get out to move the buggy. However, he wouldn't just move the buggy, but fly backwards down the dune and then speed back up it, doing the trick where we got stuck. SO SCARY. Then they had us stop to try some sandboarding. I thought this would be fun, but they wanted to go down a huge dune. I don't know how to snowboard or skate board or anything, so I got them to let us go down a slightly less terrifying dune. However, both times I went I kind of lost my balance and freaked out, which resulted in me falling on my butt about 15 feet down the dune. Justin did much better than me (of course) but he did wipe out a bit on his last time down :)
We were extremely sandy by the time we were done with the trip, but I'm glad we did it and I think Justin had fun, which is the most important thing. That evening we went back to Dubai Marina to have drinks at the Marriott's restaurant, which allowed us to overlook the Palm, a huge manmade island in the shape of a Palm. It's huge -- filled with hotels and condos -- so from the Marriott we still couldn't see it all! That night we decided to head back to Dubai Mall, since we knew we could get reasonably priced food there and we'd barely gotten to see any of it last time. We checked out the ice rink (lots of teenaged boys trying to show off by doing coordinated dances in skinny jeans), the outdoor part of the mall, Fashion Avenue (all designer stores), and stared at the aquarium for a little bit longer. It's a pretty cool place -- I definitely think it's worth checking out!
The next morning we got on another early bus back to Muscat. Of course someone else had issues at the border and again it took about 7 hours. This meant that our Hyatt plans were again thwarted a bit and AGAIN we didn't get there till late afternoon. We still had some good lazy river fun, but it was even colder that day and eventually I made Justin bail out of the pool so we could go to the hot tub instead! Afterwards, we went back to Matrah souq to pick up a few things, since we hadn't spent much time there before and I bought some nice (and cheap) Christmas ornaments. Probably the best thing, though, was that when we were walking on the corniche to the souq we saw what must have been a meeting of the Muscat Hummer club. There were about 25 Hummers in various models and colors driving together down the road, which I thought was pretty cool. Some of them even had young Omani guys hanging out the windows and taking video of it as well! That night, guess where we went for dinner? Woodlands of course! About 5 people who worked there greeted us and showed us to our 'usual' table. Now that's service!
We took the red eye flight to Istanbul where we arrived at about 6 am. After getting yelled at by a mean visa worker (I still don't understand why you can't buy a Turkish visa with Turkish currency…) and thinking that they'd lost my bag (it turned up eventually), we made our way into the city. We basically just wanted to eat all of the good food we'd had back in the spring and see some fireworks. We'd planned our food itinerary well in advance, but unfortunately the place we'd wanted to have dinner that night had closed down. However, we were still able to get the sade borek (plain Turkish pastry with powdered sugar on top) from Yildiz Cafe that Sabrina and I discovered in 2000 and the kofte that Justin loves, as our mid-morning snack and lunch both days.
For New Year's Eve itself, we went out onto the balcony of the hotel restaurant (why we'd stayed where we did) and got to watch about 6 different simultaneous fireworks displays over the city. They weren't the most elaborate shows ever, but I still really enjoyed it and thought it was a lovely way to spend the night.
The next day we repeated our food routine and checked out the Blue Mosque. Even though we saw the mosque in the spring, it's amazing and free, and therefore there was no excuse to not go see it again.
This was our trip of record-breakers: world's largest carpet, world's largest chandelier, world's tallest structure, world's biggest mall, and world's largest piece of acrylic. All impressive stuff!
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