Continued from: Muscat City Tour - Part I Mutrah Souq We drove to the harbor area where the Sultan’s pair of matching cruise ships, or mega yachts, or whatever you would call them were moored. They were sand-colored just like the rest of the surroundings. The scenery was still a bit baffling to me. On the one hand, you had miles and miles of desolate, scorched earth, and then suddenly popping up out of nowhere, you'd see some crazy display of opulence. It worked to our advantage on the water, because out of the 40 miles of coastline we covered, there
Muscat is the capital, port city of Oman. It is wedged in the desert between mountains and ocean, and offers all your arid delights, from 16th-century Portuguese forts, to modern shopping malls and regal palaces. No one can seem to agree on the true origins of the word Muscat. Lonely Planet, forever romanticizing even the most unpalatable corners of the globe in true wanderlust fashion, says that the name means ‘safe anchorage.’ And this is indeed a very poetic way to describe a city in which the sea plays such an important role. Oman is even said to have been the
Oman’s ruler, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said, is said (see what I did there?) to be to be a huge fan of classical music and the arts. So much so, in fact, that in 2001 he ordered an opera house be built in the capital city of Muscat. Sultuan Qaboos attended the Opera's inaugural performance of Puccini’s opera, Turandot, and hasn’t been back to the opera house since. The show must go on though. The Royal Opera House Muscat hosts up to 80 performances every season, including opera, jazz, ballet, pipe organ, Islamic, and traditional performances. Visiting the opera was a
I had relatively few expectations flying into Oman. Usually I do some research into a new country first, and I had bought the Oman cultural guide book, but knowing that we were going to be at a Westernized resort for the majority of the time turned me into a lazy researcher, instead relying on the few bits of information we had gleaned from our friends. The rest I could figure out once we arrived. Fletch and I were flying to Oman to help out our friends Stefan and Tanja with their busy season at the dive resort where they were currently