I'm in love with Muscat

Admittedly, I've only seen a very small portion of the city but what I have seen is absolutely beautiful, and very different again from either Doha or Dubai.

I think there may be a couple of reasons for the differences I see - firstly Oman has more limited oil revenues than some of its neighbours and therefore cannot sustain the costly expatriate labour that both Qatar and the UAE do.  So whereas Qataris form only about 25% of the population of their own country, more than 80% (or more) of the people here in Oman are Omani.
And Muscat is not about high-rise buildings - in fact the tallest building in the country is a Sheraton Hotel and it's 14 stories high!  Definitely a change from the skyline of either Doha or Dubai.

And the other thing I sort of noticed when I flew in yesterday, but wasn't really aware of until this morning, is the totally different landscape!  I didn't notice it at all in my "hotel view" photos from last night but it was a totally different story when I looked outside this morning.

Geographically Muscat is probably one of the biggest capital cities in the world, not by population (which is about 2.5 million) but because of the land mass it occupies!  It is an incredibly long and skinny city (or a series of suburbs one after another after another), wedged in between the Arabian Sea and the mountains that in places come right down to the shore.  According to the tour guide/driver I had this afternoon, the north/south distance of Muscat is now nearly 200 kms!  So if you live at the north end of the city and your best friend lives at the south end you're spending the night when you go to visit!

And as you will see from some of the photos, the entire city is built into the mountains.

Now I'm not sure about my entire time here in Oman but my tour today included me ... and the driver. That was it - yes, it was a private tour!  Since it was a Friday we couldn't go to any of the usual tourist attractions (museums etc. - but I may get to one of them tomorrow), but instead we just drove about 30 kms of the city and saw two of the most interesting areas - one known as Old Muscat which is where the Sultan's Palace (it's the turquoise building - kind of hard to miss) and two old forts built during the Portuguese occupation in the mid-1500's are located, and we also went to Mutrah which has an amazing Souq and Corniche, and another fort!

If today is any indication, I'm going to have a lot of difficulty choosing what photos to include here - I just went 'snap happy' today!