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Most likely I'll post some pics as part of whatever update I give, and given that there is no way all three of my daughters will think that they look good in the same photo at the same time, pics will likely be pulled and right there is your incentive to check back every day to see how things actually went before something gets taken down.This section will contain the running commentary from the trip, in regards to the most recent country we have been in. But once I'm able to start the next country, I'll put the historical posts in the "Old Updates - XYZ" tab above. This all assumes I (or one of my kids) will be able to figure out how to make this website work.

If you want to read about the first 28 days and our time in Italy, then click here.

If you want to read about our time in Turkiye, then click here.

If you want to read about our safari in Kenya, then click here.

If you want to read about our beach vacation in Tanzania, then click here.

If you want to read about our amusement park/desert experience in the U.A.E, then click here.

The Journey Continues - Oman

To jump directly to one of our days in Oman, click here:

DAY 75

Day 71

Whenever we stay in one place for 2 weeks, its usually because our kids need time to study and do their work, so we aren’t visiting places and going on many tours. That means that not a lot happens. My kids (and wife) say that my blog is too long as it is, so I don’t want to drag it down with what will feel like Ground Hogs day to you soon enough - We ate at the buffet, then I watched Liam in the pool for a couple of hours, then joined Megan and Keira at the beach and read, then brought Liam back for lunch, then back to the beach with Liam’s ipad so he can listen to an audio book for an hour or so, then Keira would bring Liam back to the room and Megan and I would read for hour, then go work out. Then we would cook dinner and then usually go our separate ways with the parents helping Liam read, then everyone going on their devices (Megan and I usually trip planning). That probably is going to be a decent summary of 11 of the next 14 days from Day 70 on.

So instead, I’ll try to post things that seem meaningful or interesting (to me) and the days that I attribute them to will be loose attribution, as likely some will be written about out of order, and jammed into one day but happened over the course of a few.

So far, Liam has done a pretty good job playing by himself, but he can’t play by himself longer than we can read. So when I watch him at the pool or at the playground, I’m sitting in the shade in a pool chair doing Duo Lingo (which I can look up from every 5-10 seconds to make sure he is ok and in sight) for as long as I can before he drags me into a game. There is a lifeguard, and he can generally stand everywhere in the pool, so it isn’t that dangerous, but I would be in a lot of trouble if I wasn’t watching him closely (its not clear if even this is close enough, but since Megan doesn’t read the blog, I’m probably fine). So Liam does let us get some reading in (he can play in the sand on the beach for a while, while we read) or when one of us is with him somewhere, but since we want to minimize his time on his iPad, I spend a decent amount of the time in the pool, ocean, water park or playground. Getting him to listen to an audio book on his ipad has been a great addition to the routine.

We went to the grocery store but the apartment that we have isn’t as good a set for cooking as we hoped. It doesn’t have an oven; only a stovetop and only one of the burners actually works. Meanwhile, we told the hotel that we didn’t have any plates or things to cook with, and they brought some pots and pans and 6 plates and sets of silverware. In hindsight, we should have asked for more plates because it meant that we couldn’t actually plate the food, or put something in the microwave without using someone’s plate (so when we made broccoli in the microwave, we would have to clean that plate before you can serve that person the chicken and pasta). Meanwhile, since only one burner works, it becomes a logistical nightmare. If you want to cook pasta and meat (we made beef lo mein the first night), you need to cook the pasta, and then the meat, and then put them together after.

Meanwhile, our girls had been looking to find somewhere on our trip that they could bake, and when we went grocery shopping, we saw enough ingredients where we figured that they could make something. But since we were trying to eat more healthily after eating out almost every night in the U.A.E, we thought that maybe we would buy the ingredients the next time we went to buy groceries. Of course, when we got home, we realized that there isn’t an oven, so there wouldn’t be any baking in Oman.

The first full day in Oman we went to the gym and while on the elliptical I could see a beautiful sunset. Since looking right onto the ocean normally would be East, I’m going to say that the sun set kind of on the South, or Southeast. So a little bit over the water, but mostly way down to the right. I realize that this is not how directions/sunsets work, but I figured it was the best way to describe it.

Maybe this picture was an easier way to describe it. I guess we were at a point where the land stuck out and curved back West, so the sun set partially over the water.

DAY 72

After not doing too much exploring of the area in and around Zanzibar, we decided that we would do better in Salalah. The main issue was that we didn’t really know much about Oman or what to see. We kind of picked Oman because of one random comment in a trip board that Megan read. And the resort and the beach is great, and the wifi is good, so we are happy with the decision. But to say we were in Oman and only saw the resort isn’t really enough. So, we looked on Viator and there appeared to be 3 types of tours - seeing East Salalah, West Salalah or going to the Desert.

Many of the tours on Viator didn’t have reviews, so we thought that we should check out the tour desk in the hotel. We stopped by the agency at 11am and no one was there. The person in the store next to it said that they should be back around 2 (there wasn’t a sign that showed the hours of the office). So we came back at 2 and no one was there. I called the number on the door and they said that they would be there by 4pm. Then around 3:30, they texted me that it would be 4:30.

We wanted to bring Liam to the kids club (which actually looked pretty lame - few obvious toys - just a bean bag chair, a TV, a little play set, and a Lego table but no Legos - we hoped that there were more toys hidden away somewhere) while we talked to the tour company. The room was open all the time, but the sign on the door said it would be staffed from 10-12 and 4-6. So we were going to drop Liam off while we went to the travel person, so it was eating into our kids club time to have the delay to see the travel person. We ended up going to the kids area at 4:30 and no one was there.

Meanwhile, the tour person said that they were on their way and be there in 10 minutes. So we went up to the front desk to ask what the deal was with the kids club and if they had any other options for excursions, because at this point, we were thinking that if the agent wasn’t reliable, then the tour might not be. The person behind the reception said that the travel agent would be here soon (It was now 4:50) and that we had to go to the pool area to arrange someone to be there at child care. I recommended that they put up a sign saying that, and he said, “No its alright, just go to the pool area and tell them.” After explaining that I now understood that, but future people wouldn’t know that, he kept saying the same thing, and Megan and I were getting increasingly frustrated by everyone. This was particularly true after we later went to the pool area and they said that they didn’t know what we were talking about - they never staff the child area, despite the sign saying its staffed twice a day.

The agent arrived a little after 5 and we talked to her, with Liam there. He was quiet for a while, but as the meeting went on, he started getting bored and asking for Monkey Lunchbox Junior (a game on Megan’s phone), something we usually don’t give into, but we were getting exhausted. The Agent explained the three trips that they offered, which largely mirrored the ones we saw on Viator, but didn’t do a great job of explaining exactly what happened at each spot.

I recommended we do the desert, since we knew we wanted to do that and that would give us some time to look into the other tours for the future, but Megan noted that we just did a desert tour, so it might be better to break it up. With the plan being to only travel a few days, we decided to do a full day tour (which I was a bit skeptical of, given our kids’ attention spans). So after 30 minutes we finally had a tour set up.

We then went back to the room and showered and started cooking dinner. We went through the whole process of cooking one thing on a burner at a time, and microwaving broccoli on one of the dinner plates (that had to be cleaned before someone could eat off it), and it was not really the relaxing end to the day we needed. So Megan and I decided that we needed a drink and went out to the rooftop bar.

This was a picture from a different time we went to the rooftop bar, to show you the view.

Day 73

We were supposed to go on the Tour on Saturday, but late on Friday, the woman noted that the Women’s Council stop was closed on Saturdays so we pushed it to Sunday. But then as Saturday went on, I started to feel worse and worse and got a fever of 101.2, so we pushed it to Monday. I had started to get a sore throat a few days earlier, and on Saturday morning I mentioned it to Megan, and she said, “Yeah, I know, Your coughing kept me up all night.” Which was funny (to me), because I didn’t remember coughing at all ( I must have been that tired).

In some ways it was payback because a few days earlier, Keira said she didn’t feel good and her throat hurt. Keira has pretended to be sick for almost all of her life, so I never believe her, so I expressed some initial skepticism. But then the thermometer confirmed it, and I had already karmically locked myself into getting sick next.

I basically slept from 6pm on Saturday until 4pm on Sunday and felt much better so we were now ready to go for Monday.

After breakfast we met up with our driver and headed off on our tour. Our driver was very nice, but his English wasn’t great (in other words, still much better than we speak any other language) and there were certainly some miscommunications through the day as we would ask questions and he wouldn’t reply, ostensibly not hearing us or realizing we were talking to him.

As we drove off, we saw a lot of camels - and I mean A LOT of camels. Actually, when our plane was landing, I looked out the window and could see a bunch of camels. When we took the van from the airport, we saw them again. By the end of this day, I had probably seen about as many camels as we saw giraffes in our Kenyan safari. And like a safari, they would just cross the street in front of you, although in this case, the street was a paved highway.

It was a traffic jam, but they were baby camels so we didn't complain.

The driver explained that these weren’t wild, they were owned by someone who let them out to graze, but then the camels would come back at night to drink water and eat more food. So this was a lot like the cows and sheep we would see in Kenya.

The tour started out at the Women’s center, which as you might remember, was closed on Saturday, and caused the first delay in the trip so we could see it. We were told we could see the women making things and learn about how they lived. This was technically true, but not at all in the way we thought.

The building itself was like a community center and there were a couple of rooms that were geared towards taking care of kids. The guide brought us to a room where there were a bunch of women sewing things, and the guide said they were making things, but we only saw them from the doorway; there was no tour from anyone at the center and none of the women talked to us. Then he took us to a room where there were a bunch of things hung/stacked around the walls; kind of part shop/part museum, and he showed us a traditional crib, animal skins that were used as canteens in the desert, typical dresses and men's clothes. There was even a stage that had a typical bedroom interior of a house in it that we could walk around and look at. But there was much less explanation of things than we might have thought, in part because our guide didn’t work there and so was explaining things as he new them. So definitely not worth the delay.

Then went to the fort. I’m a fan of forts and old buildings and this looked pretty neat, both from the outside and inside. However, it was pretty small in my opinion to be a major stop on a tour (but it seemed to be on every Viator tour we saw).

The fort was interesting, but a bit small.

It was interesting to walk around and see what it looked like, with a jail, bedrooms, guard quarters, towers, etc. But again, there was no tour guide there, so it was our guide talking about things and pointing things out that he knew something about, rather than a polished description.

We got to see how the people used to live - this was the head of the fort's bedroom.

Then we went to vantage point up the hill where you could see the fort and surrounding area. Apparently, the guards lived up there and helped protect the fort.

Then went to an archeological site of Sumhuram. It was interesting in part because I had done some research prior to it. It was a major port in the trade of frankincense from around 300BC to 200AD, but at some point it somehow disappeared. People knew it existed because there were text about people going there on their travels, but about 30 years ago, they used satellite imaging to find it, and had dug it out and restored it. It boggles my mind how cities just disappear, but apparently they do.

We walked through the ruins and again, our guide wasn’t terribly knowledgeable about the area, so we picked up most of what we did from the few plaques around the ruins. It reminded me very much of Pompei with the city streets, residential areas, shops, where the shopkeepers lived on the second floor, etc. but on a much smaller scale.

This reminded us a bit of Pompei.

Then we went to a museum for that site, and they showed us a video of the city and its place in history. They showed the trade routes and how the frankincense from the region when to Greece, Africa (Zanzibar!), India and China. Amazing it did that 2,000 years ago. It was also interesting to see that 2,000 years ago, there was more of a harbor there, than there was now. Most of us agreed that this museum was the most interesting part of the tour.

The harbor behind them was wider and deeper 2,000 years ago.

Then we went to Wadi Darbat, which was an area of waterfalls. From most of the pictures, we knew it wasn’t Niagra Falls or anything, and we also knew that we weren’t there during the monsoon season, so there wasn’t as much water as there could be. The driver pointed out an area where there would be large falls in the rainy season, but it was dry now.

The falls were very pretty, and there was even a camel there hanging out. But it was was pretty small. Some of the tours said that you could rent a boat, and we saw a couple of people on a boat that someone was piloting for them, getting them closer to the falls, but the falls were about 30 feet from the shore and it seemed like a waste to get it. I asked if the water rises more in the rainy season and our driver said, a little bit, but not really, because the water then would go over the bigger rock area he pointed to earlier, so it turns out that this was more or less what it normally looked like.

A pretty spot, but it wasn't clear how different it would look during rainy season.

The water went a long way after it came to the little lake, and he drove us down the street to follow the river. But the river was very shallow and the street kind of ended at a dock area where you could rent boats again, but it wasn’t clear why you would, since there wasn’t much to see. I mentioned that we might want to eat something in the next hour and he brought us to the restaurant area there but they didn’t have any chicken or real food, so we decided to move on. We were definitely there off peak tourist season, so things seemed to be closed down/running on less staff.

The second place we stopped for food looked a little abandoned and there was only outdoor seating, with two guys standing next to one pot and it was unclear what was in it. So again, we decided to move on. The driver clearly felt bad, so he stopped at a convenience store and bought us some cookies and chips - one type of chip was very spicy.

Then we went to see the highest peak in the region. On the way there was a road block of cattle. It wasn’t clear to me how we were going to get through, but our driver eased the car through and the cows moved out of the way.

A cow traffic jam every now and then might not be the worst thing.

At this point, Megan remarked that when we were in Kenya, we thought it was really funny that a bunch of cows had slowed down our Uber, but now we were somehow getting used to animals blocking our way. Its really interesting how this doesn’t happen in the US (at least not in places as densely populated as the cities we had been visiting on our trip), and I actually wondered if that wasn’t a little bit sad. Its an inconvenience, but also nature and humans mixing without too much trouble for either one, didn’t seem like such a bad thing. I mentioned this to Elenna and she quickly brought up how much poop we have had to avoid on the trip which is a decent point.

As we walked down the path at the mountain peak, we got a good look at the valley below. The temperature up here was about 10 degrees cooler than in the valley, and with the wind it felt even a bit chilly. Clouds were starting to form, and everyone started to bring up our ill fated trip to Mount Etna, which apparently I will never live down.

Liam stopped Elenna from falling down the mountain, while I was able to capture the moment. Meanwhile, Liam started getting into a picture taking mode and made us take this thumbs up pic.

When we got back to the car, the driver had bought us some bananas, so we now had plenty of food to get us through the rest of the trip. That said, there wasn’t much explanation of the peak, or what we were seeing below.

Next he brought us to a sink hole. The driver noted that during the rainy season, water comes in from 3 different areas and goes into the hole, but again, everything was dry. We went down to the viewing area, but you couldn’t even see the bottom of the hole from where we were and it was kind of neat, but fell short of being impressive.

That was actually how I would characterize everything we had seen on the tour so far - kind of neat, but short of impressive, even though everything we saw was on a Viator tour, so apparently were the things to see in the area. Maybe that it just because we had seen lions so camels aren’t quite as impressive. And we had seen huge cathedrals in Italy and mosques in Turkey and U.A.E., so a smallish fort didn’t create the same wonder. Even the natural wonders probably would have been more impressive during the rainy season. I started to wonder if this was how I was going to feel on the rest of the trip - if traveling for 10 months meant that only the truly remarkable would stick out. I made a mental note to try to appreciate things for what they were instead of focusing on what they weren’t.

That said, our kids were ready to rebel - it had been a long day and it could have gone 3 more hours, since we were supposed to go somewhere to see the sunset, so we cut it short and just went to see the baobab trees. But there was only 2 large trees (I was excited because it looked like the tree you see in the Disney Safari at Animal Kingdom, but no one else wanted to get out of the car). They are usually found in Africa, so it was unusual for them to be there at all.

I guess only Liam and I are true Disney fans.

The driver was a little disappointed that we were cutting the trip short, but waiting another 2 hours would have caused a riot, and if the point was to see the sunset, it wasn’t clear the vantage point would be a whole lot better than it is from our hotel. So we went back and decided to just eat at the rooftop pizza restaurant and watch the sunset from the rooftop deck.

Its hard to beat the view from our hotel's rooftop restaurant at sundown.

Day 74

As we have largely been in a routine, I’ll focus on a topic near and dear to your hearts: Stamps. A bit random (unless you are my father-in-law), but, dear readers, you get what you pay for.

We have periodically been writing postcards to people. In this day and age it feels very anachronistic to be writing something on a piece of paper and then putting it into the mail with the knowledge that it will get to the recipient 30-60 days later. I mean, if you want to know what we are up to, you can just read this blog, right? And if you aren’t reading the blog, then do you deserve a post card?

We went to a memorial service for the brother of a good friend of ours, and one of the people who spoke told about how this brother wanted a post card from his friend when he was traveling. One trip, he bought the post card, but didn’t have time to send it right then, so he mailed it when he got back and the brother was upset, because, in his view, the post card was less about showing you what they saw, and more about showing that they were thinking of you while they saw it. And since I heard that, post cards made a little more sense to me, but then I also got a bit more focused on sending the post cards quickly and from the location if possible.

Meanwhile, everywhere we go, I offer to buy our kids post cards as a way to stay in touch with people - staying in touch with friends and family is a key concern of our kids and therefore something I wanted to encourage in all of its forms. However, they all hem and haw about whether to get them, but they all wrote a couple and got great feedback from the people who received them, so they all bought another round in Dubai. So I figured that it would be easy to get them to actually write them and send them out, but no. I gave my kids the assignment of helping Liam write his, but to my knowledge, about 3 weeks later, no one has actually written their own cards, which is weird to me because they were all happy when people said that they liked the cards. I think that they feel the need to write something that they aren’t already texting people about, which I get, but again, its not about what the card says.

Meanwhile, Megan, in a classic mom move, got upset at the clutter on the kitchen table one day on our trip back from the Burj Kalifa, and started throwing things away. But she didn’t look too carefully at the bag she threw away and threw away the bag that looked empty, but on closer inspection would have showed 16 stamps. So now we had a bunch of postcards but no stamps. Ever since then, I’ve been on the lookout for stamps, but its been really hard to find them. Many places sell post cards, but not stamps.

At our hotel in Oman, they said that the gift store in the lobby they sold stamps, and when Megan went there, they wouldn’t sell her stamps unless she got a post card. Given our overabundance of post cards, we wondered if we should just buy 16 new cards and throw them away and use the stamps, but I decided not to on general principle.

On our tour of Salalah, I told the driver that I was looking for stamps, and whether he didn’t know where to get them and selectively “forgot” or whether he legitimately forgot, I literally asked him about 8 times to stop somewhere if he thought they sold stamps (I had checked at one stop that sold post cards, but it didn’t sell stamps, even for the cards they sold). So finally on the way home after the last stop, I asked the driver AGAIN, and he stopped at a couple of places and they didn’t sell them. I also stopped at a couple of places the second time we went to the grocery store, but to no avail.

So I ended up going back to the guy in the hotel and bought 3 post cards and got him to sell me 4 stamps. As I bought the post cards, he said that the cost of the stamps was included in the price of the cards, so I kind of got why he wouldn’t just sell me so many stamps, because he probably got them together, and breaking them up would mean in the future he would have more cards that stamps. But I felt happy because we could send the 4 cards we had written, and, net, had 1 fewer card. So, if you got a postcard and are wondering where the next one is, odds are, it hasn’t been mailed yet and you will have to wait awhile.

Here are two pictures of Liam in swings (his natural habitat), because I didn't have an stamp pictures.

Day 75

We had to go back to the grocery store, and on our first trip there Megan saw some people carrying out cakes and said that anyone who wanted some cake should join us on our second trip to the store. Elenna and Liam agreed, and Keira wanted to decide last minute, but Lily said she couldn’t because she had too much school work. The day of the trip came and Keira decided to stay back and read on the beach, Elenna dropped out, and Liam almost did too, but we convinced him to come.

The cakes did look good, and the shop itself was quite cute. The actual cake though, was a bit meh.

A very cute place, with good looking cakes. Would have been better if they tasted better.

Similar to the first time we went, I tried Otaxi to get a cab because it was cheaper, but then the taxi driver called me and said that “it was bad for him” to go to the hotel. The first time we went to the store, the driver said he wasn’t allowed, and the way the second driver talked, I got the sense that there was some kind of mafia controlling the taxis in the area, and he didn’t want to cross them. So we ended up paying about 3x what the app said it would cost, but the driver waited, and it was a guaranteed pick up for the way back, so I guess that was fine.

Since we are talking about ride hailing, I wanted to share a couple of photos. The first is of the Uber app in Nairobi. I thought it was interesting that you could hail a motor cycle for about half the price of a car.

You can chose between a motorcycle and an electric motor cycle in Nairobi.

The second picture is of the Otaxi app, where you have the option of hailing a female taxi driver. This is likely for religious reasons, but could be for safety reasons.

I was happy to see that the female taxi cost the same as a regular taxi.

One day my mom asked why we didn’t just ask for more plates if we were doing this convoluted way of cooking things, and by the time she did, we had already asked for more plates, and they gave us so many, we didn’t need them all. It was interesting how we dealt with a shortage of plates and cooking gear for 3 meals before asking for more. It was partly because we weren’t thinking about it during the day, and partly it was the hassle of figuring who to call for things vs the hassle of dealing with what you have.

The one thing that they wouldn't give us was a sharp knife, and when we asked how we were supposed to cut the watermelon we had, they offered to pick it up and cut it for us, which they did. But we still didn’t have a good way to cut some of the other fruit; like pomegranates that we bought, so Megan bought a sharp knife when we were at the grocery store. The knife was big enough to cut a watermelon, but Megan decided she liked the way the hotel staff cut the last one, so we would use them again for the second watermelon we bought.

Finally, while I have a little space here, I wanted to talk about tourists. In Italy there were a LOT of American tourists, and in some spots we heard more English than Italian. When we went to Kenya, there were still a decent amount of Americans, but the English spoken more likely to be the Queen’s English. Even in Turkiye, there were Americans obviously about. But when we got to Zanzibar, there really weren’t many. A lost of people from Poland and Eastern Europe. Keira was mistaken for a Russian in one place. When we got to the U.A.E., it was similar - very few Americans. Here, the tourists were actually more likely to be from Pakistan or India. Now in Oman, I’m not sure that I’ve seen an American. Everyone at this resort seems to be from Europe (the majority seem to be between 60-80, but that could just be the time of year - who goes on vacation in early November?).

In general, this all makes sense. Its a lot easier to get to the Middle East from Europe than the US. I think that there is probably a bit of unfounded fear in the US of traveling here, as if its not safe. We certainly did some research before choosing the U.A.E. and Oman, and we scrapped plans to go to Petra given what was going on in Israel, but at least these two countries felt much safer than most places I've been. I kind of like going places that, while not off the beaten path, certainly aren’t the normal US experience.

That said, it has made it a bit difficult to meet people. In Italy, it was so early in our travels that we weren’t really desperate to talk to strangers to get new stories and points of view, but now we are more in search of that. But when there are 4 people speaking Czech, it isn’t obvious that they will speak English (they probably do) or how well. Megan and I aren’t generally the “talk to strangers at a bar” type people, so throwing up one more barrier makes it unlikely we would even try.

But that leads me to my final point that I find interesting. Pretty much everywhere we have gone, the people have spoken English. And that makes a lot of sense to me in places where Americans or English go (you have to appeal to the tourists), but it is just more interesting to me to find it happening in places where that isn’t the case. We are so lucky to be from America, and how our culture has been exported across the globe (although I guess England controlling most of the world for a century or so certainly has helped spread the English language).Most of the time there are signs in English right next to the native language signs. We can go almost anywhere, and the people will be able to communicate with us, instead of us trying to figure out how to communicate with them.

We can go to a movie theater in Dubai and be confident that the American movie we are watching will be shown in English. When Megan and I were in the Oman mall, even the shirts and sweatshirts in the stores will say “San Francisco” or “Miami” on them. The taxi drivers will inevitably ask where we are from and then the two most common guesses when they hear “United States” is “New York” and “Chicago”. I would have been hard pressed to name 2 cities in Oman before I got here, and now that I am here, I can probably still only name 2.

Day 80

The other trip we took while in Salalah was to Rub’ al Khali or “the Empty Quarter.” It is a desert that spans about ⅓ of the Arabian peninsula, including parts of Oman, Yemen, U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia. We had already done a camping experience in the desert while in the U.A.E., but to me, it felt a bit short of what I was looking for given the sand dunes had scraggly underbrush everywhere, and there were still animals and things living there. I wanted to experience nothing but sand dunes as far as the eye could see.

In general, the rest of the family was not excited about this trip, particularly after the last 8 hour tour here wasn’t great. The kids don’t like to do anything and they (and to some degree Megan) felt like we “saw the desert” on our camping trip. As a result, since the desert was 2 hours away, it felt to them like a long trip for little reward. My view was that it was 2 hours away but it was 7,000 miles closer than it usually is, and there is no point in coming here if you aren’t going to see things. Megan, though skeptical, and clearly disavowing and responsibility for choosing the trip, had my back and forced it through. Meanwhile, I was hoping that the 4 hours round trip in the air conditioned car would be less draining than the constant getting out in the hot sun that our last trip required.

Although the trip was to the desert, it wasn’t the only stop. The first stop was Thumrait, a town where we stopped to get some snacks that we would eat on the dunes. We could have had some Arabian coffee but since we don’t drink coffee we just kept going on the road. We forgot to bring the gummies we had promised for Liam, so I went in with Ahmed, our guide, and he got 3 lollipops and I told him to get 4 because I’m sure all our kids would want one. I also got Liam a Hersheys white chocolate bar to make up for the lack of gummies.

The first real stop was the lost city of Ubar. The guide gave us the option of just seeing it from the outside or going in (going in would require $25 of tickets for the family). My thought was that if we came all this way we should go in. So we went in and if seeing the ruins in Sumhuram wasn’t as impressive as Pompei, than this wasn’t anywhere near as impressive as Sumhuram. There wasn’t much to see except for some walls. So after paying for the tickets I realized why Ahmed would have been ok just showing it to us from the outside.

We got to see another set of ruins. Although smaller than others, it had a history I could better understand.

But at least the reason for this being a “lost city” made more sense to me. Ubar was at one point the largest city in the region (our guide said the Middle East but I’m not sure about that given how big the ruins were - this would have been around 800AD) as a hub for the Frankincense trade. The city was so large because it was one of the few places with water and you could see where the old well was. However, a giant sand storm came through and buried the city and killed most of the people.

In the back you can see the "U" where the well was.

Then, about 40 years ago, satellite imagery showed something was there and they dug up that area. Ahmed said that there were other houses around but were still buried but hadn’t been excavated, in part because some rich people owned the land around and didn’t want it disturbed. But we were about 1 hour from Salalah and pretty much in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn’t clear what would have been disturbed.

It was nice to get out of the car and walk around, but soon the flies started attacking. It was so bad that if we stopped to talk about something we would be swarmed, so we did the tour while walking. As we got back to the car, Ahmed said that we needed to hurry or the flies would follow us. We got into the car with military precision but still had about 8 flies follow us, which we were largely able to get out of the car as we drove to the next place.

At the next stop we got to see the black camels. Unfortunately, it was basically a petting zoo where the camels were held in pens that were WAY too small for that many animals, putting a damper on the experience. There was a baby camel and Megan and I pet it but the kids were all too scared to touch it (it was in no way threatening and further reinforced that our kids are not really “animal people”).

Our kids are not animal people. But they are against the way that these camels were being penned in.

Then Ahmed asked if we wanted fresh camel milk and we all said no, but he got a big bowl and started to drink. At this point, I thought about my trip to Ecuador while in college, and the group of us (that had to speak Spanish the whole time) came up with a saying “Por qué no? Estamos en Ecuador” (Why not? We are in Ecuador). And with this phrase, we decided not to turn down things offered to us, whether it was a type of alcohol made in part from a person chewing on a root and spitting into a bowl, or eating roast guinea pig.

So with that in mind, I said I’d try some and the Megan followed suit. They gave us mini cups of milk and it tasted pretty much like warm cow’s milk. None of the kids would try it, and when we offered it to Liam, Ahmed said that he probably shouldn’t drink it, because his stomach might not handle it well. At this point, it dawned on me that it wasn’t pasteurized and if it might not be good for him, maybe it wasn’t for us either, so Megan and I dumped the rest of the milk.

Our ill fated toast of camel milk.

Then we drove another 30 minutes to the dunes. We had been driving for over 2 hours from Salalah and the landscape had been getting progressively more barren (I would have said Ubar, 45 minutes away, was already in the desert, but in more of a packed, hard earth than sand dune desert). So when we could see the dunes in the distance Ahmed pointed to them and said that was where “the empty Quarter” began. He said it was called that because plants, animals and humans couldn’t live there. Between the look of the dunes and that description I was getting more optimistic that this would be the sand dune experience I was looking for, and quell any complaints from my kids that we drove all that way to see something we had already seen.

As we were now going to be driving on sand, Ahmed stopped the car and took some air out of the tires. Then we drove along the sand towards the dunes. As we did, he kept up a good speed (I think once you stop, you run the risk you won’t be able to start again).

There is a thing called “dune bashing” which is driving up and down dunes in a 4x4 car, going up and down steep drops, and Megan did NOT want to do this with the kids in the car. We had warned them that when we booked the tour, and they said the guide would do whatever we wanted.

So we drove up the hill and the driver asked if we wanted to go down and drive around. The drop off looked steep but he said it wasn’t. He kept assuring us that it was safe, and I was sure Megan wouldn’t let him, but she agreed and we did it. He was right that the drop wasn’t quite as steep as it looked, but as we went up the other side and around we drove along a steep ravine and swayed a bit as the car veered a little out of control on the sand (a bit to close to the side in my view) but then he regained control and got back to the starting point. He asked if we wanted to do it again and I again I was sure they wouldn’t want to (and probably if Megan was in the front seat she wouldn’t have) but we did it again. Liam loved it, saying he wasn't scared at all. Below is a video of the second turn we took.

Surprisingly, the whole family enjoyed the dune drive, Liam most of all.

After that, we got out of the car at the top of the dunes and took some pictures. Ahmed took pictures of everyone, but seemed a bit more focused on Keira, not quite in a creepy way, but it was a little weird as we had to keep saying “now Lily’s turn, now Elenna”. Meanwhile, in a theme that had been occurring all throughout the trip, pretty much whenever any guide asked how old everyone was, they were all surprised that Keira was the oldest, thinking instead it was Lily.

I was jumping for joy that I finally got the desert experience I was looking for.

Then we ate some snacks until the sun went down and we took a few more pictures.

It was a pretty cool place to take photos. Keira was lamenting that she stopped acrobatics when she was 8, or she would have done even more pictures.

Then we drove back with a plan to stop for dinner. We had brought Liam’s iPad and he didn’t use it on the way there but we said he could on the way back. But then he didn’t listen to Megan about putting the screen light lower (it was so bright and lighted up the whole car) so we took it away, saying that if he was good he might get it back after dinner. Like most punishments like this, the child felt it, but so did we (especially Megan who had to entertain Liam for the next hour in the car).

When we got back to Thumrait, we stopped at a restaurant for a typical Omani dinner. It was interesting how many hamburger restaurants we had passed, which kind of got me in the mood, but he brought us to a real restaurant. They served all sorts of food including Indian and Chinese, so we had Ahmed order us typical, local food. He asked if anyone wanted camel, and I figured “Por qué no?” But the girls either had chicken or beef. We ordered some noodles (asked not spicy) for Liam. They brought out two types of rice and two types of bread that both looked like naan.

As they brought out the food, it quickly became clear that it would be more than we could eat, which I was happy to see because I wasn’t sure I would like the camel. I ate some rice and chicken (the chicken was pretty spicy) and some beef (which was very chewy) before the camel came out. It came out in a bowl and the pieces of meat didn’t look very appetizing but I took a piece and tried it. It basically tasted the way you might think camel tasted - it had the taste of the smell of the camel pen we had visited, with kind of a went fur smell. Needless to say I only had one bite, and with that description no one else tried any. Liam’s noodles ended up being spicy and it wasn’t clear if they forgot or if that was their definition of “not spicy”. Given how spicy the chicken was, it could have been either way.

There was plenty of camel meat for the whole family.

Before dinner Megan went to the bathroom and came back saying there was no toilet paper (luckily she had some tissues) and it was disgusting. Most of the bathrooms we had seen in the Middle East and Zanzibar had a little faucet on a hose next to the toilet which we assume is a bidet type thing. Later she told me that the room was covered in water as if someone used it to take a shower in there, with the toilet covered in water too. When I took Liam to the bathroom after dinner, we had a similar experience with the men’s toilet.

On the way home, when we were about 5 minutes from the hotel, Megan had us pull over to use the bathroom as her stomach wasn’t feeling great. It wasn’t clear if it was the camel milk earlier or something from the restaurant, but she still felt a bit off even the next day.

We got home around 10 and everyone was exhausted and we went to bed. The next day, Elenna said she would give the trip a 7 out of 10, and Keira said it was an 8 and would have been higher if she didn’t feel so bad about the camels in the petting zoo. I took that as a huge victory given the pushback to start the trip.

Day 81

We had been lamenting the fact that there were few people who spoke English at the resort because A) there was no one to talk to with new stories we hadn’t heard, and B) it would be good to have Liam play with some people his own age. There are a few kids here but the tourists seem to largely be Czech, so he hasn’t found anyone who spoke English. So it seemed like a great opportunity when we were wrapping up breakfast and all of a sudden there was a little girl who was standing behind us. She was perky, friendly and cute.

She told us she was 6 and we introduced her to Liam. Then she said she was from “Georgia, no Egypt” and either one would have been believable. We asked where her parents were and she was a bit evasive and she said she wanted to play and since we were done, we all went outside. Megan was carrying a bunch of stuff, so I took it and put it back in our room while she followed Liam and the girl.

I felt bad that Megan might be stuck out there when the plan had been to go to the gym before the trip to the desert. So I came back out and sat with her while she watched Liam. She said that she had looked for this kid’s parents but couldn’t find them, and was a little worried that they would think we had kidnapped her. Then we talked a little about what to plan next for our trip and I started to buy some plane tickets on my phone.

They were playing relatively nicely, but then Liam got hurt and came over. Then the girl came over and asked if we had ever seen some character, and as she explained it it sounded like it was a character from a horror movie and she started singing this creepy song. At this point it was starting to freak out Liam (and to some degree Megan and me) and we told her to stop. She kept singing it for a little bit eventually we got her to stop. Then she said she had a different song to sing and started singing by “Dance Monkey”, which took us by surprise and was kind of funny to hear.

We kept asking where her parents were and she told us that her mom died and she hated her dad because he hit her. Then, she said, “not really, he’s very nice”. We didn’t like how easily she seemed to lie to people and were quickly souring on Liam meeting new people. Then she said she had a place to play and ran pulling Liam with her. Megan got up and quickly followed them while I was stuck in a tricky point in the airline ticket process (the part where you have spent 15 minutes putting in all of the passenger information, passport, etc and are trying to pay but credit card transactions aren’t going through, so you start trying different cards before the website says you have taken too long and have to start all over).

Apparently during this time, Megan was trying to find out more about this kid and asked where she was staying and she pointed to a little building that was clearly some sort of hotel building for equipment or something and said she lived there. Then she tried to prove it by trying to break in before Megan stopped her.

Then she asked where we stayed and before we could stop him, Liam ran off to show her. She then tried to go into our apartment (there is an unlocked ante room where we leave our sandals and sand toys, then a normal hotel door lock that leads to the apartment). She saw the toys and started to go for them saying that she didn’t have any toys there, and Megan was able to get her out of the room and back towards the lawn.

At this point, I was finished with the booking (at least I had gotten to a page that looked like it worked but without a final confirmation) and Megan was apologizing to the girl saying that we had to go on a trip. She kept wanting to play with Liam saying one of his sisters could stay here with them but we said we all had to go.

I don’t know if I’m giving a good explanation of how creepy this girl had become to us. I had just read a book about a child abductor who used his kid to lure kids away and I was 90% sure that wasn’t the case here but something was definitely off about her lying. She complained that she wouldn’t be here tomorrow so this was the only chance to play, and at this point Megan and I had done a complete 180 on this girl going from hoping she and Liam might be able to play together for the next few days to glad that we were leaving for our desert trip and wouldn’t have to dodge her all day. Later, we told the story to our kids, while trying not to scare Liam or think that meeting new kids was somehow not fun.

I feel a little bad dedicating an entire post to this little girl, who probably was just lonely and wanted someone to play with and wasn't great at connecting, but she has become a bit of a family legend, so I had to write it down for posterity.

Since I don't have any picture for this story, below I'm posting a picture of Liam on a bench. When it comes to pictures, Liam is generally a good sport, but he will often say he won't be a picture, but then once you start taking it without him, will run in at the last minute. Every once in a while, Liam gets into a picture taking mood, and wants his picture taken a lot - usually if you see a picture of us where we are all giving a thumbs up, its because it was Liam's idea. Here, for some reason Liam wanted his picture taken on this bench. I'm not sure why.

Liam on a bench, with one of the toy trucks we bought him at the hypermarket.

Day 82

Another random topic to discuss is electronics. We have had various problems with things throughout the trip. I’ve already written about the bad internet in Zanzibar, losing the portable WiFi device in Cinque Terre and how bad paying for things have been (flights, hotels, Tokyo Disney, etc).

But beyond those we have had difficulty watching things on TV. We have VPN so we can stream, and it took us a little while before we realized we could download that onto the Amazon Fire Stick. When the VPN is connected to a US connection, the streaming service thinks you are in the US and gives you access to the things you expect to get in the US, but if it knew you were in a foreign country then some things wouldn’t be available, while some other things would. We’ve even had some streaming services that weren’t available at all in some countries. One of the big shows for our girls was Dancing with the Stars, so there has been an almost constant discussion of how to stream it, whose device was fastest with the VPN, or whether it was better to download it and watch it later.

When we were in Abu Dhabi, we couldn’t get the fire stick to connect to the hotel WiFi for a while so we ended up up using my phone as a hotspot to stream the “How to Train Your Dragon” movies. TVs at the apartments have generally worked, but in the hotels have been much more hit or miss as some will let you plug in a Fire Stick and some won’t. We also have been out of luck screen mirroring to the TVs, because Apple doesn’t connect well to most TV brands. Even when we tried downloading apps to make it easier, they wouldn’t work, I think because the TV isn’t on the same WiFi as our device (but usually at hotels, the TV settings are locked, so I can’t get in to know for sure).

For the most part, this isn’t a big deal, as we have watched things like “Agatha” on my laptop, sometimes with 3-4 people crouched around. And most of the things we tried to watch weren’t big things to miss (with apologies to Dancing with the Stars) but sometimes we wanted to watch a movie that takes place in a place we will visit, to make it more interesting. Or sometimes, we just want to do something like a family (like watching “How to Train Your Dragon”).

I don't have any pictures of us struggling with technology, so here is a picture of Liam after lunch (and how he looks after much lunches), where eating white bread covered in Nutella is a staple.

For example, Megan wanted to watch the first Tomb Raider movie because some of it took place in Angkor Wat. I spent about 2 hours trying to figure out how to stream it before giving up and downloading it onto Elenna’s computer, the only Windows based computer we have, so the only one where screen mirroring might work. But after being able to screen mirror for about 2 minutes, it stopped working. Megan, Keira and I watched it on the computer and Megan told Elenna and Lily to watch it later as part of their homework (which made me laugh out loud, since I had already seen the movie and couldn’t imagine anyone considering it homework).

Another instance was when Elenna had to take a standardized test online. We dutifully checked everything out 3 days before to make sure it worked and logged on 30 minutes before the test to give us ample time to log on. However, we got to a point and got an error message. Then we tried again and got the same error message and found that it meant our internet wasn’t fast enough to support the test (not sure why this didn’t warn us 3 days earlier when we tested it). I quickly got the portable WiFi but it was saying it had no connection. So then I tried to download the test taking software onto my computer (there was special software that wouldn’t allow you to change browsers and cheat while taking the test). We finally got on through my computer using Elenna’s phone as the internet connection, but by now it was 6:17 for a test that started at 6pm (9am ET). It ended up being ok as far as the test went, the test had all sorts of FAQs about what to do if you lose connection mid test, etc., so lost connections didn’t seem like a new problem, but I felt bad because it added a bit more stress to Elenna right before what was already a stressful test to take. Of course, she ended up rocking it anyway, probably helped by the extra adrenaline.

Megan is a big fan of night swimming, based on her days going to Cape Cod in the summers (“Nightswimming” by REM is also a family favorite). So she recommended that we go swimming as a family some night. The pool was only open until 8, but with sunset at 6, it was plenty of time.

We ate dinner at the pool restaurant, and then went over to the swim up bar (our family can’t resist a swim up bar). The bar had a blender, so Megan and I order daiquiris but it was pretty clear that there was a language barrier issue and the bartender wasn’t sure what we were ordering. I ordered a raspberry and she ordered a mango, but I was 95% sure that we would get something unexpected. The kids wanted non-alcoholic frozen drinks, but I recommended we see what our drinks looked like before we ordered more. After they arrived as non-frozen drinks, the girls changed their orders. But there is still something nice about a poolside bar.

The family at the pool side bar, and the non-frozen drinks we had.. But really, you can't complain.

We all went down the water slide and did a bit of swimming and time in the hot tub. Later, Liam said it was the best day ever because we went night swimming, and he had never done that before. It doesn’t take much to get that kid excited, which is part of the reason that we keep him around - to find pleasure in the simple things.

Day 83

Its hard to believe that this 15 day period is already over. We really enjoyed our stay at the Crowne Plaza - it has been a perfect set up for us - 3 bedrooms, a kitchen where we can cook our meals on the cheap (once we got the plate situation straightened out) and a washing machine in the room. The beach is great and there are a couple of pools. Its definitely a little dated, but once you throw in the free buffet breakfast and the fact that they have pretty much given us a case of water every day, its been a great find. The only real complaint has been that the kids club isn’t actually a kids club - its just a room where a kid could play, but there are few toys and no one supervising it.

The biggest problem over these two weeks has been health, as first Keira got sick, then I got sick, then Megan, then Elenna didn’t feel well, then I got another fever. Meanwhile, I’ve been coughing pretty much the entire 2 weeks, so Megan, after trying to sleep in our room for a couple of nights, gave up and has been sleeping in Keira’s room (which has a free bed because Liam is sleeping downstairs on a couch. We had been having Liam sleep on couches in most hotels to free up beds to avoid two people per double bed, and now couches seem to be his preferred place to sleep).

However, once again, it has been hard to get our kids to actually go into the ocean (or in this case, the Arabian Sea). Megan and I just don’t understand it. Lily has been to the beach only 3 times, ostensibly because she doesn’t have time, but in reality because she is prioritizing working out and decompressing on her phone. Elenna has been more often, but probably only about 40% of the time and never goes into the water. Keira went to the beach every day, but it wasn’t until day 13, when we essentially made her, that she went in. Lily went into the water on day 14, after we pressured her to.

Some of us enjoyed going into the water.

The beach is amazing, with fine, white sand that somehow doesn’t get too hot in the middle of the day. The one issue is that your feet do sink into the sand a little bit when you get into the water. Generally speaking that is not a problem. However, when you are holding onto Liam and the waves are hitting you and your feet get stuck in the sand, it can make things a bit more difficult. This is compounded by the fact that there is a strong cross current that would pull you down the beach if you tried to just float, so you are getting pulled in multiple directions every time a wave comes. But the water is nice - its warm, but not so warm that it isn’t refreshing. Its clear, but since there are waves, the sand gets moved around a lot, and you only have visibility down about 3 feet or so.

An unconfirmed Keira sighting in the water.

There are a lot of little sea creatures, some sand crabs and some kind of snail with those spiral shells in the beach. When you walk on the beach, and the waves crash, you can see those spiral shells, and then the borrow into the sand. There were so many that that it kind of creeped me out a little to know I was swimming with all of them, but you just don’t think about it.

One of Liams favorite things to do now is to write equations in the sand, near where the water means the beach, and its more flat and easy to read. He knows his time tables through 11, can add and subtract double digit numbers and can do division through multiples of 11. He can read time on a digital clock and can also do the math about time - if he notices that its 9:31 and breakfast ends at 10:30, he will tell you that breakfast ends in 59 minutes. We attribute almost all of this to the show Number Blocks, which teaches math really well, but we have been encouraging it (especially Lily) and asking him math questions to distract him whenever he needs to. If he learns to read on this trip, we might have to put him into 8th grade with Elenna when we get back.

Liam loved drawing equations in the sand.