So, in the end we decided not to fly out today. Give ourselves one day to just relax in Muscat before continuing on our way. After all of the go, no-go of Khasab we’ve earned that much, right? And we’re sure you won’t mind our decision either.

What to do, what to do? We wanted to go to the Natural History Museum, but that closes super early and my partner is lazy today, so we won’t have time to make it. So instead we just look at the map and choose a direction to walk in, not entirely at random as we would like to go towards the coast, but there aren’t any particular things we would like to look at between the hotel and there. So let’s see what we can see.

Very close to our hotel it seems like there are just a bunch of ministry buildings. Most are only identified in Arabic, so we have no idea what they are for, but they’re all very big and very new buildings.

We just walk and walk, and then our map says there’s a little walking trail close to us. Might as well take it. This is how it starts.

And this is how it ends.

Quite the walk. It was gorgeous. We walked along a “creek” as it is called with palm trees and other things around us. We were the only ones back here, for the entire walk we didn’t see anyone around us. Maybe because of the heat? But in the shade it was fine. And the birds! SO many birds! It was definitely a random find on my partner’s part, but we are both very happy that we did find it. And on our way there we saw SO many embassies like Bahrain, United States of America, European Union, residence of the ambassador of Cyprus (and you could rent it), Japan, Italy, and Russia. And when we came out to the sea we had the embassy of India on our left and the embassy of the United Kingdom on our right. Quite the crowd. But back to the views.

While we were here at the beach we saw quite a few people crossing the creek to the other beach we wanted to go to… But we weren’t changed for the water yet, so back we go. And after a bit more walking we were on the other side of the creek at the beach. And! bonus, there were washrooms where my partner could change into his bathing suit. We just stuck around here for a while enjoying the water. My partner didn’t go in too deep because the waves were pretty big, but it was a gorgeous and hot day. Although it was mainly tourists that were in the water today. Not many locals at all. Maybe still too cold for them? But we have now gone for a swim in the Gulf of Oman (technically we could say the Straight of Hormuz is the same thing, but technicalities don’t let us count it twice…).

We just continued walking along the beach as much as possible, every once in a while looking back to see the beautiful view.

I was literally carried for kilometres as my partner just walked and walked and walked along the beach. I think he was really enjoying it, because we didn’t really have a reason to keep going, but keep going he did. So, as you may have noticed, today will be pretty short on descriptions or anything else, and it will be mainly pictures as we walk and walk. At one point we had to walk through a construction site, looks like these will be absolutely massive waterfront properties. Wonder if the beaches here can be made private or if they will stay public for everyone to enjoy. We walked by some pretty fancy hotels and they hadn’t privatized their beaches, so let’s hope it’s the same here. It would be a shame to break all of this long nice beach up.

And then we just watched these guys play a bit before starting the final leg of our beach walk.

By the time the sun started to set my partner decided that we should probably start walking back towards our hotel. It was obviously getting late, and he had already carried me so far! At least we can enjoy some views over the Gulf of Oman on our walk back.

And then even lower. What. A. View. Not a bad way to end our trip to Oman.

Well… we left the beach because we saw that there was something to look at nearby where we were walking. The Royal Opera House Muscat. Just look at it. What an absolutely HUGE building. This picture is from the outside through the fence because we didn’t think we would be able to get in this late in the day.

But, we can get into the grounds in the evening. There’s a fancy mall/shopping area next to the opera house, so it makes sense that you can access the building. Luckily we could get these pictures, even though we couldn’t go inside to see the actual interiors. But, we did look it up and they had some fancy shows coming up soon. Imagine watching the National Armenian Symphony in that building. We can imagine that it would be nice. Next time in Muscat we will have to try to see if we can get inside. That’s two opera houses we would like to come back to, the first is the Bolshoi in Moscow and the second is this one.

Then it was back to the beach for a bit more walking. My partner is really working overtime here. Just zigzagging back and forth to soak in as many views as possible before we leave this beautiful country.

The beach was SO dark. SO, SO dark. It was incredible. Just enough light to walk by and enjoy the sound of the waves crashing. And everywhere we looked there were these holes. We couldn’t make sense of it. We had seen them earlier as well and just thought it was seagulls digging at something.

But then we saw these things running around on the beach. My partner nearly jumped the first time something randomly started moving on the beach! And they were so fast! Some were tiny, some were pretty big, one was even fighting/playing with one of the street cats. The beach was quite the happening place! Maybe it’s these little creatures that make the holes in the beach? If someone knows for sure, let us know.

But then, that was it. My partner had had enough. At the next chance he got he took the nearest road back to the main road and we sat and waited for the bus to take us back. He was too tired to walk the remaining three kilometres. I could have easily sat in his book bag for those last three kilometres, but no, we waited for the bus instead. At least it didn’t take too long, and he got back early enough to the hotel to enjoy the rooftop pool.

Even the pool had nice views of the city below.

And then, as is routine, it was off to the hypermarket for tomorrow’s food. And tonight’s food. Our last day in Oman was nice and relaxing, even if my partner had to walk a lot. Good night from Muscat!