Walking in Muscat

Photos at:
http://cmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2061853&l=d6607&id=4807606

(I tried to sync this entry particularly so with my pictures on facebook- if you are up to task, I would recommend looking at them side by side.)
I am sitting at the base of an ancient fort situated on the top of a mountain overlooking the bay and main port of Oman. To get here required a little ‘rock climbing’ because it seems that they removed the lowest part of the staircase to prevent small children from coming up here. We’re eating a picnic lunch that we bought at “Muscat Bakery” and trying to soak in the view. The Blue water, the Green grass- the colors are so vibrant! Who would know that we’re in a country predominantly desert.
There are tons of seagulls here at the bay. The city seems to have placed these concrete tank-trap like things to prevent waves from forming close to the boardwalk- and each seagull chose one to sit and shit on all day.
The Royal Palace is different than anything I have ever seen before. Imagine multicolored medieval bugles, stood on their mouthpieces, and a roof on top- and that sort of describes his palace. But truly, its magnificent. I have read about the royal processions that go on occasionally, and if I see one- I will be sure to let you know cause the word on the street is that they are “off the hook” (?)So Oman is filled with forts- built throughout their history, and renovated at various times until today. In pretty much every town there will be one, and then there will be towers on various surrounding hilltops that were sometimes all connected with walls- like a fortress. There are two full forts around Sultan Qaboos’ palace, and they overlook both the grounds and the bay. There exists a staircase that can bring one up to the fort, but a big cement wall was placed near the bottom of that staircase to prevent non-committed tourists from seeing the fort for themselves. After a quick scaling of the cliff nearby (in dress shoes and petite sandals nonetheless!) we reached the staircase above that annoying wall, and were able to enjoy the palace grounds from a high vantage point.