This morning we woke to rainy weather, which had been predicted. It seemed to be intermittent. Evelyn and I were at the gym working out for the first time since our colds. We both have recovered with out complication.
The rain has stopped and the sun is out. I'm waiting for trivia at 11am. We will have lunch and then at 1pm we can go ashore. We are taking the shuttle bus (free) to the souk, hopefully it will be open. The drees code in Oman is much stricter than Dubai, women must be covered up, no elbow or knees, and they would like a head scarf if possible. This will be interesting to see how our fellow passengers take to the dress code.
We are only here until 6pm and then we have two days at sea on the way to India. Evelyn and I will leave the ship for three days to take the Taj Mahal tour. It is expensive but it may be are only chance to see the Taj and we didn't want to miss the opportunity. There will be 140 passengers on the tour. More on this later.
We docked in Mina Qaboos, which is the port for Muscat. It is quite pretty as the ship sails in, high hills surround the port, with a fort. You may recall my comment yesterday about harbors. Well! Mina Qaboos is the largest natural deep water harbor in the entire region and has been a shipping hub for many centuries.
We decided to not take a tour, but just take the shuttle into then old town of the port. It was only a short way, but because of security we could not walk. There is another cruise ship in port from the MSC line (German) and for that reason most of the stores were open. This was the kind of shopping Evelyn was made for. She bargained for everything and made some good deals. The souk was very large and meandered like a maze. After a while you keep seeing the same things in every shop. We did find some fun souvenirs and no Starbucks in sight. In fact in comparison to Dubai, Muscat has NO franchised american fast food or stores. Most of the shop keepers we met were expats from India. The town was friendly and clean. We felt safe and enjoyed just people watching. A note about the tourists dress. No modesty there... Shorts, tank tops and everything else. luckily the locals did not seem to take offense. It is though inappropriate to take pictures especially of the women in any of these countries without their permission. Each of the Arab countries' women dress slightly differently but always with modesty in mind.
It was overcast and the temp was about 86 degrees and humid.
We walked around for about two hours and took the shuttle back to the ship. Don and Myrna had gone back sooner and we called them when we got back. We sat in the buffet and had a beer while we played a few hands of bridge.
It was a fun afternoon. The ship sailed at 6pm and we now have 2 days at sea on the way to India.
Sent from my iPad
Hal
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