BIG BUS TOURS Muscat: Stops 6-10 (Part 2 of 2)

Continued from Part 1, this is mostly a post of pictures from stops 6-10 of Big Bus Tours Muscat.  The Muscat Clock Tower near Stop #6: Central Business District  (Public Bus Stop – Bustling city centre, Clock tower, shopping) is  the oldest monument in modern Muscat.  Driving by Friday Market at Wadi al Kabir.  The recording told us that Friday Market is actually open on Thursdays and Fridays from 7 to 9pm.  This was the first time I had ever heard about this market!  The impressive mountains on the road (pictured on the right here) which lead to Qantab, the Oman Dive Centre, Shangri-La, Yiti and Sifa.  Stop #7: Parliament (Opposite Parliament Building – Parliament, Clock tower, Al Bustan 5 star resort)  The 64 metre iconic clock tower of the new Parliament (“Majlis” in Arabic) is the highest clock tower in the Sultanate.  Stop #8: Marina Views (View point layby: Scenic stop.  Marina, Picnic area, Park)  The Big Bus Tour drives by the historic coastal area of Sidab which is used as one of the bases of operations for the Omani Coast Guard.  Along Sidab Street  Stop #9: Al Alam Royal Palace (Roundabout – Sultan Qaboos Palace, National Museum, Old Quarter)  This is the stop where a daily 60-minute tour begins at 3pm and finishes up at Stop #10.  Through Muscat Gate  The tour finally stops just under 2 hours later (depending on traffic) at Stop #10: Corniche (Car Park – Scenic view of Muttrah, Corniche, Dolphin Fountain)  If you have the time, I highly recommend getting off at this stop and walking back along the corniche towards Muttrah Souq.  A big thanks to Big Bus Tours for the complimentary ticket to check out Muscat.  It was an enjoyable trip around Muscat with some great views and educational commentary on a city I’m proud to call home.  I’ll finish this review with another short vid from my tour: 

A Hymn a Week: Marching to Zion

Gary Chapman sings “Marching to Zion” from the video series, A Hymn a Week, which he and his wife, Cassie upload to youtube and to Facebook. This lyrics to this song were written in 1707 by Isaac Watts and the music was written by Robert Lowry in 1867.

Is Justice Worth It?

“Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien, the fatherless or the widow.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” (Deuteronomy 27:19)

“Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the LORD understand it fully.”  Proverbs 28:5

Fireworks at Muscat Festival 2013 (Amerat Park)

“Freezing Omanis” Broke 2 World Records Yesterday!

  It took time for my camera (as well as my body!) to adjust to the temperature of -20 degree Celsius while in the freezer yesterday. That’s why this 1st pic is a bit blurry.  Here’s a much better pic from their website, Freezing Omanis:   Ameer Abdul Hussain (codename “Penguin“) and Bader al Lawati (codename “Snowflake“) are scheduled to fly out of Oman for their mission to Antartica in just 5 days!!!  Read up on their itinerary here.

In the meantime, here are some pics and one combined video of 3 clips from inside the “evil freezer” in Wadi al Kabir.  Check out the temperature of the freezer unit just before we started.  It reads   -19 degrees Celsius but we were below -20 degrees for a total of over 1 hour and 20 minutes!!!  What makes it more shocking is that it was a temperature of 27 degrees Celsius outside so that’s quite a temperature change for the body to take on!  Let the tweeting begin!  We were blogging under the hashtag #TweeterinaFreezer.  You can follow Freezing Omanis on twitter at www.twitter.com/FreezingOmanis   Some of Bader’s sponsors   Some of Ameer’s sponsors       Left to Right: Ameer, Rummy, Maurizio, and Bader.   This is a pic of Maurizo (wearing his wife’s lovely hat! 😉 ) from Oman Collective Intelligence blogging in the freezer.  Part of the world record breaking attempt dictates that we should all blog and/or tweet while we were in there.  Here’s the blogpost he wrote while in the freezer.  You can find him on twitter here.  Maurizio’s phone was the 1st to freeze in the freezer…   And here’s the charming Rummy from Merge FM.  She cares a lot for the enviromment and tweeted quite a bit from the freezer before her phone became #2 to die from the cold!  A pic from Rummy’s blog .  Click here to read the post she wrote from the freezer – well worth a read!  You can follow here on twitter here.  This pic was taken of my son’s mini ipad that I like to kid myself into thinking is mine.  The mini-ipad worked well with no problems at all in -20 degrees Celsius! 🙂  I used it for blogging and tweeting as I’m having troubles tweeting with my Blackberry Bold. (?!)  Everyone hard at work at we begin to really feel the cold! Maurizio even resorts to covering his face giving him that sinister bandit look, haha! Bader Al Lawati can be found on his personal twitter account  here and  Ameer Abdulhussain can be found here.  Besides myself, this is the rest of the “long haul” gang.  There were 2 others who showed up an hour into the event.

So, mission accomplished! 2 world records: 1) most bloggers/tweeps in a freezer and 2) coldest tweetup ever.  Today the video that was recorded to verify the event is to be shipped to the committee to verify the records.   These records aren’t the hardest to beat but to tell you truth, the records weren’t the goal.  They were simply a great marketing tool to help raise awareness more than anything.  It was a lot of fun and a great honor to be part of such a worthy cause! 🙂   I’ll leave you with this last reminder (stitched into Bader’s sleeve) to follow Freezing Omanis on their epic journey on their blog. 

Let’s all show them some support on this trip! 🙂  It’s young Omanis like these gents who are paving the wave forward for Oman and ensuring a brighter/cleaner/more responsible future/planet for our kids and I’m glad to call them friends!   The record breaking, motley crue on Feb. 21st, 2013.  (Taken from Maurizio’s blog, Oman Collective Intelligence)