Muscat: On the Water

If you go to Muscat, you must go out on the water with the remarkably genial Captain Salim, or -- as we did -- with his equally genial son, Akhdar. (Captain Salim was busy driving a boat to Oman from Bahrain. Better him than us.) The text messages alone will be worth it. There is also a little matter of honey cake (made by the Akhdar's mother) and Arabian coffee on board.

It was sweltering as we waited at the marina's bar (yes, that's another reason to love Oman) for our ride. But when we got out on the water, the weather was perfect. Breezy, even.

And....there were dolphins!  Big, graceful ones, giant versions the small graceful ones we saw on our last trip to Oman. And *lots* of them -- more dolphins than we'd ever seen all at once. Apparently, it wasn't too special. Akhdar told us he'd once seen a pod a kilometer long.

Akhdar was a clearly worried we wouldn't get to see dolphins; we kept insisting that it was amazing just to be out on the water. We meant it. The coast is beautiful, orange and rocky against the deep blue of water and sky.

We stopped to swim near a reef, when the honey cake suddenly found a whole new purpose. It turns out, fish like honey cake as much as we do; Akhdar threw in a few tiny pieces, and fish came storming over.  With just goggles and flippers, we drifted through the coral reef, where we ran into purple butterfly fish, big greeny-blue fish, little yellow guys, and even a few turtles! They're easy to spot when they pop up to breathe. But unlike us, they only do that once every half hour.

And then it was back again, to our friendly marina with its beer on tap. Oman, we love you.

Dubai: Near the Top

We bought tickets to "At the Top," the observation deck of the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa. It was originally named Burj Dubai, but was renamed after the ruler of Abu Dhabi after Abu Dhabi bailed out Dubai in 2010. (Names here are super confusing. Most streets, for example, are named after Sheikh Zayed in one way or another.)






















Here we are "At the Top."

Well, near the top. Here's what we could see below:



And here's what we could see above:

Before heading to the top, we prowled the nearby Dubai Mall, the world's largest mall. The mall went on for miles. There is an ice rink and an aquarium; we gawked at the latter in great awe for quite some time.



Honey is sold much like perfume - in beautiful glass vats, at almost $100 a pound.



There is an impressive array of designer clothes, including baby lines for some of the major brands. For example:



But most of the miles are full of cake. One of us spent a lot of time gazing at the cakes. There were layer cakes, and cupcakes of all kinds.

 A branch of Magnolia Bakery (though *this* Magnolia will screen print your cake with Disney princesses, which we're pretty sure is a no-go at its big sister in New York).



And the loveliest and most wonderful bookstore in the world. Well, in the UAE. Here Margaret is, in delight. For what did she find? The complete work of Dickens in three different editions per novel, and a full stack of secondary Literary Criticism. Not bad.