07:00 - We had left a wake up call the night before since we would have slept half the day given a chance. We got up, packed our daypacks and headed down to breakfast on the back terrace of the hotel. We were able to eat breakfast outside and listen to all the birds while eating and planning our day. Muscat has A LOT of birds and many seemed to be raiding the table next to ours. The breakfast buffet was a standard European/American style with the addition of normal Arabic items and something new which was a type of fired slice of very salty goats cheese stuff that Maggie fell in love with. We think it was called something like "Haloumni." Every time the people got up to get something from the buffet, the birds moved in quickly, eating all the sweat breads and fruit they could before the people returned.

07:45 - After breakfast, we headed off to find the Europcar place using the Lonely Planet Guide. It takes about 25 minutes by cab and we learned later that the guy would have driven the car over to the hotel to us for a small charge. For details on the car rental, see the popup on the car place.

08:30 - After we figured out where we were, we headed off around the corner to the National Museum in the Ruwi Quarter of Muscat. The museum is a bit small but it makes up for that in charm! It spread of a few floors and is easy to find. The museum has displays of cultural items, dress, weapons and jewelry, boat building and styles, etc. Our Lonely Planet Guide indicated that English was not spoken but a quick Arabic greeting to the docent on duty resulted in him waking up a bit, greeting us heartily in english and making sure we got off to a good start and were passed to the ladies upstairs who also spoke English quite well. They showed us around and were always ready to provide info on the various displays.

From the Museum, we made our way down to the Corniche and took a few photos. The Corniche is quite nice and looking at it, one can understand why Omani's were seafarers! The Corniche is naturally rounded, there are forts overlooking it with a really nice harbour with some trading ships in it. Along the Corniche are the old traders and merchants houses and then in a bit the Souq starts. One can imagine it this way several hundred years ago with little difference. It is really well laid out. The Souq is really nice, one of the best (if not THE best) we have seen. It is very clean, the people are pleasant (and willing to take your money!), and it is located well along the Corniche so you can get a cab, park, etc. nearby.

At the Souq you can find all the normal stuff such as silks from India, Household items, Gold, Silver, Antiques (genuine), wonderful Omani Chests, Frankincense and other types of incense and perfumed woods, and kitsch. Maggie and I were really struck by the cleanliness of this Souq. We have been to a few Souqs around the middle east and the Omani Souqs, like the rest of Oman, are really clean. The Sultans influence is apparent everywhere. This was the Souq where we bought a Kanjar (A Silver curved knife) after a good hour of chatting and discussing the prices...-Took everything we had since the Omani shops really play a hard bargain. Our Kanjar is about 40-60 years old, which is average for the better ones and it has been used (we wanted a real used one, not a show type which are also very nice). I call it our little hunk of silver since Kanjars are made of silver cord and thread (solid). The threads and cords are woven about and they have a backing of some type of felt. The hilts are normally made of either Ivory or antler horn (ours is antler). We also picked up a traditional Omani hat here which is a really nice brown shades. One thing most people don't realize is the Omani's really like color, including the women. There is only one region in Oman where the women dress in all black and are covered, including the little face mask and that is a far out area we did not visit. Most of the women wear colorful Abayya's (I probably spelled it wrong but that is how you pronounce it!) and it was a welcome change to see all the color and to hear loud talking among all in the Souq as well as laughing (something we rarely hear in Doha)... we are not sure why, but the Omani's are definitely different in that respect-Lots of laughing!

From the Souq we headed off to glimpse the Sultans Palace and the Mirani (Mirani, again, and again) and Jalali forts. These forts are used by the military and police today so you cannot just walk in and visit but we did take a number of photos from around the forts. The Sultans Palace was... well, it looks like a Sultans Palace!!!! ... About here is the point we were convinced that if Oman had any bad points at all, it was that the road signs were poor at best. Near our hotel, there was actually a roundabout that had directions for a traditional crafts center that actually pointed in 3 different directions-the fourth, unposted direction, was the one to take we realized later.

After seeing the Sultans Palace, we moved on down the coast towards the Bandar Marina, which was where Anton would go diving from the next day. There were a few small villages along the way. We also wanted to grab a bite to eat since we were STARVING at this point! After checking in at the dive center, we headed back to Muscat and then North up the Batinah Coast since we still had some daylight left! We passed the Grand Mosque again, this time during daylight-Still looks really good

Once we were heading up the Batinah Coast we left civilization a bit... many of the towns are a bit smaller and definitely had their own flavor. Along the way we saw several camels eating away on all the trees (camel 1, camel 2, camel 3, camel 4, camel 5). There was also another fort (of course) and a whole lot of date palm orchards. that eventually gave way to the sea suddenly (the sea just shimmies right up to this little village)

After exploring a bit and taking some more photos, we headed back to the hotel to clean up, and have dinner. There is a Trader Vics on the hotel grounds so we went there for some nice cocktails and a big dinner, Polynesian style. We turned in to bed around 11 or so ready for some sleep to prepare for the next day.