This week we travelled to Muscat, the capital of Oman, for a few days. The girls were off for the week because of the Muslim holiday EId al-Adha. (This is the Festival of Sacrifice, and is the latter of 2 Eid festivals celebrated by Muslims. This commemorates the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God, before God intervened to provide him with a sheep to sacrifice instead.)
First some information on Oman:
Oman has an area of almost 120,000 sq miles, about the size of Great Britain. It is the second largest country in the Arabian Peninsula after Saudi Arabia; bigger than Syria, Jordan & Lebanon combined.(This was a surprise to me!) The name “Oman” is thought to mean “the abode” or “the land”. It has over 1000 miles of coastline and over looks three seas – the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea, and the Arabian Gulf. For those of you who have been following our travels, you will remember that we visited a portion of Oman, called the Musandam Peninsula, last Spring! That is a small portion of the country – only about 1200 sq miles – that is separated from the “mainland” of Oman by about 45 miles of UAE territory.
For this vacation we flew into Muscat – only a one hour flight from Abu Dhabi! An exciting note to this trip, was that totally independent of us, very good friends of ours who had lived in Abu Dhabi last year and since moved to Dubai, had made the same travel plans as us and were staying in the same hotel! We were very excited to see them!
We arrived at noon on friday Nov 3. What I noticed immediately on the short drive from the airport to the hotel was how much greener and mountainous this area was. There weren’t any skyscrapers, just low rise buildings all keeping with the typical arabic architecture. And everything was so clean! The city was an odd mix of old world Arabic style architecture with modern conveniences. The roads appeared new, wide and very smooth; and the streets very clean. Almost all of the buildings were white. Which against the green of the landscape and blue of the sky made for lovely scenery!
After lunch by the pool, we spent the rest of the afternoon lounging!
Now the family struggle begins! My family is clearly split on how to spend vacation time! I like to tour and see everything possible! Especially in this part of the world where everything is so different! But other members of my family feel differently and would prefer to spend most of their time by the pool. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind lounging with a good book, but I can only do that for a day at the most! But I succumbed to the peer pressure and spent the second day at the pool with our friends, and another family that had also driven from Dubai. They had 2 girls – in 9th & 11th grades – so that made for a very pleasant afternoon! We did agree though that we would visit the local souq – traditional market – later that afternoon, so I was happy!
Now for more history! The Souqs of today are commercial markets in an Arab city. “Historically, souqs were held outside of cities in the location where a caravan with goods would stop and merchants would display their goods for sale…At that time, souqs were more than just a market to buy & sell goods; they were also major festivals and many cultural and social activities took place in them.” Today these souqs have become a bit more modern. We had been told by many friends that we had to visit the major souq in Muscat – so off we went, all 3 families!
I can’t even think how to describe this souq, or what to compare it to so that you can visualize it! It was clearly an older version of a souq and was where many of the local arabs did a lot of their shopping. There were 2 main “roads” lined with hundreds of shops/stalls. We were approached at every stall to “come see Mamm, you need a pashmina?”… Oh no – my weakness – pashminas. Step away Leslie – you don’t need any more pashminas! The souqs are great places to get gifts that are typically Arab – the traditional Omani men’s hat, the pashmina’s, the arabic coffee pots, the incense burners, and items made from local silver. Bargaining is encouraged – and the girls did a great job at this!
That evening we enjoyed a wonderful seafood meal at a local establishment! Our friend Hasam had heard about it from his friends in Dubai. It does help to know the local places – and to speak Arabic! They brought us platters of hummus, moutabel (my absolute favorite!!), tabbouleh, & arabic bread, followed by salad, grilled shrimp and grilled hammour – the local fish, which is delicious! A very nice evening!
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