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I started off my first day in Muscat with breakfast at the hotel. The hotel got mixed reviews for the breakfast and I found it to be somewhere in between a nice try and mediocre. I left for the harbour area to start exploring.



The taxi dropped me off at the fish market where locals were trading everything from small crabs to huge tuna. While in the front row unprocessed fish was traded an entire section of the covered market was occupied by men cleaning and cutting fish for the customers. Quite interesting to see how fast those men cut down fish.
The fish market is in the northern corner of the small corniche which is lined with merchant houses, a mosque and the famous Muscat souq.



I walked along the corniche towards the souq on the southern end of the corniche.






In front of the souq a sign confirmed what I've already guessed while walking around in the sun. It was already quite hot.








After walking around for almost an hour I got myself some water and a cold mango juice at one of the many coffee shops.



I wanted to walk back through the souq to the waterfront where I wanted to grab a cab back to the hotel for a nice break. After all Muscat proper is quite small and I would have enough time for more exploration later in the day. I ended up chatting to a spice vendor in front of his shop for an hour. He had amazing mixes of roasted spices. Not only did I taste and buy a lot of things but we also traded a few recipes. I told him about my figs with feta cheese creation (baked in the oven with fresh ground pepper and some honey) which he loved and wanted to try asap. I've asked him for some pointers on what to see in Muscat and Oman. He got me interested in the Nizwa region which I looked up on the Internet and in my Lonely Planet book. Later that day I put in a reservation for a small car the next day.

Next to the hotel one of the few large Lulu Hypermarkets just opened offering an amazing array of fresh cooked food as well as prepackaged local salads and fresh fruit. I did some shopping and took the loot to my hotel room.



In the evening I hailed a cab to take me to the old town area. The driver dropped me off in a region that somehow matched the destination but then wasn't. It was one of the few rip off things that do happen. Well it happened which means I'll be safe for the rest of the year. In the end I walked a bit and took another cab ... I might have lost 2 Euro but did not care too much.

Relatively few people live in the palace area and as I was a bit early for sunset most of the tourists (not that there were so many) had yet to arrive.