Beginning of an Omani adventure…

After a long day travelling, we arrived safely at Seeb International Airport where our progress became ensnarled in the bureaucratic procedures of entering the Sultanate of Oman. Required to buy a visa upon entry, we queued with just about every British family East of the Suez. There were children in backpacks, children playing in the ropes, children sitting on the floor, children playing video games, they were everywhere! And among them, were the adults, standing patiently in the queue with sets of up to six passports in hand, telling them all it won’t be much longer. Liars.

Visas firmly in hand, and passports duly stamped, much to Cora’s glee, we made our way through to the other side where Adeline and Thierry were waiting. After leaving St Albans in the cold darkness of a 2C degree morning, we stepped out of the airport into the warm darkness of a 27C degree evening.

There is something magical about arriving in a place at night. The mystery and expectation is held longer than when you see your surroundings from the air. After a quick drive to their flat and a humiliating painful experience of watching France lose again to Argentina in the Rugby World Cup, we crashed.

As we awoke to a blindingly brilliant cloudless sunny sky, we took in the surrounding view from the windows. All around us were brown rocky mountains, sandstone and whitewashed buildings with intricate details on the windows and sporadic green shoots.


We spent the day doing various activities that allowed us to see a large portion of this sprawling city. The morning started off with a few errands for the boys getting some water and other such things while the girls were off to the beauty salon so Adeline could get some highlights, and as it turns out, so Cora could get a massage which Adeline had booked for her as a surprise, just one of the many immensly generous things they did for us!

Adeline and Thierry had a wedding ceremony to go to in the afternoon so had a nice hour just the two of us walking along the beach picking up unique shells and trying to figure out what ate the washed up creature which we are pretty certain was some sort of ray.

We got our first taste of the old parts of Muscat including the port area of Muttrah and the old walled area of Muscat.

The latter is dominated by the Sultan’s Palace which is an odd mix of brilliantly white marble archways and an array of colours, curved architectural features, gold shields and languishing guards.

Some of us, i.e. CW, think, that the central piece of the palace looks much like a North Sea oil platform that has been crossed with a Bollywood set.

More tomorrow when we venture outside of Muscat for the first time...