Today we are in the port of Muscat, the capital of the Sultanite of
Oman. We left Dubai yesterday at about 10:00 AM and we cruised very
slowly until about 5:00 AM when we arrived at Port Sultan Qaboos. We
cruised very slowly because it is not a long distance between Dubai and
Muscat.
After breakfast at about 9:00 AM we took a shuttle bus into the small
port town of Mutrah and wandered around. In addition to the many mosques
in Mutrah, the biggest attraction is the souk, or market. There they had
everything for sale - shirts, veils, skull caps, brass items of all
sorts. In fact, it was possible to purchase a brass lamp, as in Aladin's
Lamp. We passed on this though. We are not shoppers. The photo here is
an old fort that looks down on Mutrah and was probably erected to
protect the harbor from thieves and pirates. I don't know how old it is.
An item I neglected to mention earlier is the age of the passengers on
the Amsterdam. I know that the average age of passengers on Holland
American cruise ships is generally older than most cruise lines. This is
generally because the length of the cruises are longer and older folks
are retired and can be away from home for longer periods of time. This
cruise is longer than most, it being 110 days, although we are only
cruising for the final 33 day leg of the cruise. That being the case,
the folks here are old and I mean old! I suspect that when Nancy and I
came on board the mean age of the passengers dropped between 10 and 15
years! We are just kids on this cruise.
Thats it for now. We will leave Muscat at about 10:00 PM and sail for a
couple of days to Salalah, another port in Oman.
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