A quick jaunt to Oman

 

We should go to Oman more often, we concluded after our trip last weekend. It has everything. Huge rock formations....

 

 

Dinky towns that boast multiple castles.

 

 

Carpeted boats....

 

 

....fit for a young sultan....

 

...or even his lady.


These gentlemen are probably closer to being sultans than we are. When asked how many children he had, the man on the right first said he didn't know. Unsettled, the Dutch man who had asked inquired again, and got a vague mumble: "dozens." Nick had a brief conversation in Arabic with them, which involved much laughter.



We were on the Musandem peninsula, at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Though it is surrounded completely by the Emirates, it is part of Oman, a vestige of the tribal affiliations. And, unlike the northern emirate of the UAE, Ras al Khaimah, it is wonderfully empty.

Look carefully, and you'll see a tiny fishing town. No signs. No fancy hotels. Want to get there? You'll have to take your own boat, and you'd best speak Arabic.



There are other, more accessible towns, but they are almost as small and quiet as this one. And that means that their beaches are even quieter, though some are surrounded by little fishing boats. You can camp on many of them, including Bukha beach, with no questions asked. We will be back soon, sand tent in hand.


And when we do go back, we will take our new kayak, and will likely skip the carpeted boat. But the boat trip was marvelous. Here are butterfly fish (or so we're told), swarming to eat little pieces of apple.

 

And here are the peninsula's famous dolphins, playing nearby.

 

 

 

Perhaps they were more exciting in person.

 

The boat took us to Telegraph Island, which the British used to string wires to India in the 19th century.

 

 

We had a lovely hour of swimming in the coral reefs surrounding the island. We saw starfish, sea slugs, all sorts of medium sized fish, and a few different kinds of coral. And then it was back to Khasab, where there is a wonderful beach, just outside of town.

 

 

...with little huts to shelter in...

 

 

 
...lined by jagged rocks.


And populated by small children, a few people intently doing calisthenics, and some goats.

We ate dinner in the most beautiful parking lot on earth, surrounded by craggy cliffs, a crescent moon overhead, and calls to prayer ruffling the crowd mid-way through our meal.

 

 

We were happily reminded  of Washington's core strengths on the trip up.

 

 

No other apple comes close....but Oman's beaches will give Seattle's a run for their money.

 

Sweden & Scotland Reading Lists

Sweden

Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1796). Full of interesting observations (one, "it may be delivered as an axiom, that it is only in proportion to the industry necessary to acquire wealth that a nation is really benefited by it," might resonate with Abu Dhabi residents). 

Selma Lagerlof. The Saga of Gosta Berling. First woman to win a Nobel for literature. 

Tomas Tranströmer The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems (contains his 1954 17 Poems, for which he won the 2011 Nobel). 

Stieg Larson. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Perfect plane reading....we can find out what all the fuss was about. Henning Mankell is also on the list, should we run out of material. 

Scotland

Samuel Johnson. Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775).  

James Boswell. The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785). Yes, these are straight off of Margaret's lists for oral exams. Did she read it then? She can't remember. Will she read it now? Definitely.

Robert Burns, Complete Poems (includes his 1786 Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect).

All things Walter Scott. All things. But perhaps his 1802 - 1803 The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border is best for evening reading, and lolling beside lochs, and huddling over tea to avoid summer rain. And John G. Lockhart's Memoirs of the Life of Walter Scott (first published 1837 - 38) - but very selectively. There are ten volumes -- that's at least nine too many, for carrying purposes -- in the second edition.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped (1886). Loads of Scottish landscapes, and loads more adventure. 

And tour books, but we haven't got those yet. If we splurge, we will go with Eyewitness, as usual, but if we find extremely cheap, older guides in our favorite Abu Dhabi used bookstore, we may be tempted into roughing it with those. Suggestions -- on reading of any kind -- are very welcome. 

The Ultimate Escape

With its inescapable lashings of pork, liters full of beer, and cheerily oblivious nude sunbathers, Germany might be the perfect antidote to Abu Dhabi.

We spent a week in Munich, visiting Nick's college roommate, before Margaret trundled off to Leipzig for a conference, and Nick trundled back to Falconcity of Wonders (well, unfortunately, not quite there -- but in driving distance).

We found wonderful places....a tiny, exquisite games museum - five rooms stacked, one on top of the other, connected by a dizzying spiral staircase. 

....shops willing to supply doners for pocket change....

....parks galore, with spring flowers beginning to bloom....

(This bloom was from a rainy trek up to Andechs Monastery to see their lovely church, and to sample their beer. Rumor has it that liquid bread was acceptable during fasting times, and so the monks amped up their Lenten ales accordingly to deal with fast days like Ash Wednesday. Anyway, we were glad to get a liter or so each on a drizzly spring afternoon, before catching our train home.)



...favorite German words...

....and beer gardens, brimming with people, even on work days. 

Nick also discovered lederhosen, though he quickly returned the outfit after some sheepish modeling.

 

We went on long runs through Olympic Park, through the English Garden, along the canals, out to suburban palaces, and down by the Isar.
 

We even tried out a sauna (though figuring out the proper etiquette was a major challenge for our German skills). And we were delighted by the novel possibility of going to real museums. We spent hours in the Deutsches Museum, a labyrinthine science & tech museum on the river, which boasts a model train so massive and intricate that the 20 minute show we attended felt far too short. Each room was gorgeous, and fascinating, even given our poor German and wobbly grasp of all things technical. Here is the museum's room full of planes....

And here is Residenz, a huge castle in the middle of the city, replete with its own theater, multiple chapels. Just walking through it once felt like doubling our mileage for the day. 

It was very sad to send Nick home....

 ....but home he went, back to a world of sun, (slightly more inhibited) sunbathers. No doners in sight, though. 

Abu Dhabi Air Race

After a long (by Abu Dhabi standards) hiatus, the Red Bull air show returned to Abu Dhabi.  Neither of us is a big fan of motor sports, but since the show was just outside our door, we had to take a look. 

The competition is based on timed circuits that pilots take, one at a time. (Thank goodness -- one of us is quite worried about air collisions...but more on that later.) Pilots have to navigate between cones either vertically or horizontally.  The cones are set apart two meters wider than the planes' wingspans.

The weather was perfect for the competition, and crowds were gathered for picnics, parties, and general spectating. After the competition, the Red Bull skydiving team landed in unison on the public beach, and UAE pilots put on an air show for the crowd.

The show was fun, but terrifying. Perhaps most disconcerting was a stunt called "crazy flying," which involves flying *as if about to crash*. The mere fact that this style of performance is appealing says a lot about taste in the Emirates. 

Watching near-death flight stunts was quite exhausting, so it was off to Lebanese Flower, an Abu Dhabi staple, for banana smoothies, falafel, shrimp sandwiches, and of course, mixed grill.

Camping at Jebel Yibir

Despite a previous trip to the Northern Emirates, it was still odd to get an email from a friend suggesting we take a trip to the highest peak in the UAE, Jebel Yibir.  Isn't the highest point in Dubai?

It takes about three hours to get to the middle of nowhere, UAE.  (A bit less if you're not particular about the view.) To get there, take the bypass road to the Dubai bypass road. Despite the double bypass you will have performed, expect to find traffic. But there is happier traffic, as well: dozens of camels happily lolling beside the road.  Then, pass through a few small towns, on the lookout for any goats who may wish to cross the road. If you're hungry, stop off at one of the many Pakistani restaurants, where you can get delicious biryani, daal, fresh bread and tea with condensed milk -- but you'll have the wait until the Friday prayers are over.  Even the "24 hour" restaurants are abandoned during prayer time.

After some wadi wandering, we found a flat place for our tents.  It must have been a construction site at some point -- we found pallets and old metal doors with the UAE falcon, which were useful wind screens for the fire.

We went for a scramble downhill to a wadi, and up a cliff face the next day. Near the wadis there are amazing wildflowers.

From the wadi, we scrambled up our mountain...

...from which we had views of both the east and west coasts of the UAE.

On the way home we stopped off at some crazily orange dunes on the way to the UAE's (heavily irrigated) farmland. The dunes first appeared as a deep orange glow about the horizon....and slowly materialized, into burnt orange sand, stretching in every direction.

Dubai Museum

Moving from the Bay Area to Abu Dhabi was a shock to the system.  However, Abu Dhabi is completely tame compared to the Dubai, the Wild West of the 21st century.  In Dubai, the buildings are taller, the traffic is worse, and brunch doesn't start until 6pm. We couldn't very well let our prized guests from Sweden, Katie and Nik, leave without a visit to this...place.  Here are they are, in stunned (and befitting) tourist mode. 

After a trip to the Dubai Mall (biggest in the world, of course), we took the Dubai Metro (biggest or most something, probably) to the Dubai Creek, home of the gold, spice, utensil, and textile souqs.  We found amazing jewels, including this very large bracelet.

The spice souq is on the Deira side; we rode an abra to cross Dubai Creek to get to the Bur side of the creek, where we stumbled into the Dubai Museum, which we had looked for but never found.

There were interesting exhibits of old boats...

...luxury desert housing....

...and signs we weren't sure made sense at a museum.

It was a surprisingly large museum, and we ended up breezing through the last few exhibits.  But we'll be back.  Once we made it out, it was time to grab dinner at Potbelly's (!) and retrieve our car at the mall, which doubtless is also the most crowded in the world.