This had to be one of our most boring days on the road so far. We set off from Sur early in the morning again, after a lovely complimentary breakfast at the hotel. Mum and dad spied some packed lunches being made and decided that it would be a great idea to get some of those for the trip as we weren’t so sure how long we would be on the road today. However I declined the honour of one of these lunches, quite rightly assuming that it wouldn’t really be to my liking. Our travels today took us only on [View Full Entry]

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Well today was a HUGE day. We got started really early as we couldn’t wait to get out of the horrible hotel that we were staying in. I have to say that it was probably the worst hotel that I have ever stayed in (and I have stayed in plenty), in terms of the overall impression of the place. So if you are ever in Muscat STAY AWAY from the Majan Continental Hotel. Go somewhere else. So we were all up nice and early (5:30am for Chelle and a little earlier for the elder Ade’s) and managed to get out of [View Full Entry]

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Today we hopped back into the car to visit some of the beaches near to Muscat. In particular we were heading towards Yiti and As Sifah. The route we needed to take took us very close to Muttrah where we were yesterday. After navigating our way through the Muscat road system we found ourselves at the start of the route. For some reason I had thought that the start of the route would be a peaceful little turn off, something akin to a turnoff to a beach in Christchurch. However as a complete contradiction the start of the route actually turned [View Full Entry]

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The shopping day! Today was officially dubbed the shopping day by mother, before the day had even began. After the events of yesterday the elder Ade’s had mutinied and decided that they were not getting in the car today and that they wanted to spend the day walking around Muscat. Little did we realise that Muscat is rather spread out and that you can’t really walk around it in the sense that you would walk around a city like Prague. The first task of the day was to find somewhere to clean the car. This actually turned into quite an eventful [View Full Entry]

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Well the day began as many a Christmas day has begun in the Ade family with a walk along the beach. Except this time the beach was in Sohar, Oman. A little different to little old Eastern Beach or Ohope Beach. Following the beach walk we settled down to the serious business at hand. That of opening up the enormous stack of presents that had accumulated. I must admit that I felt more than a little bashful when I surveyed the stack of presents as most of them were for me. Only 5 of them were for mum and dad (I [View Full Entry]

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This morning saw us leave the joys of the Al Aqqa beach resort. We headed down to the views reception before we left to partake of a wonderful breakfast. In fact the breakfast was so wonderful that we basically rolled out of the restaurant to the car. Now the car. I have to talk about the Jeep. Yesterday the Jeep threw up a warning light on the dash and mum made a joke that maybe the car was just too dirty and was feeling sorry for itself. So when we got to the hotel last night I asked the valet parkers [View Full Entry]

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Well today saw the Ade family circus leave Khasab to venture back into the wilds of the UAE. We counted our blessing as we left Khasab that we had done the dhow cruise the day before as a rather stiff wind had blown up overnight and one thinks that the people on today’s dhow cruises would not have had as enjoyable time as we did the day before. Quite frankly the wind was more than a little stiff and cold. So tucked up in our nice, warm little jeep we started our journey back towards RAK. The trip down to RAK [View Full Entry]

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Well today saw us getting up and making our way off to our Dhow adventure. I had booked a dhow cruise for us all in the fjords of the musandam. When we arrived at the wharf there were about 7 dhows all lined up and the nice man who greeted us told us that we were on Dhow #4 today. So we climbed over the first three dhows and settled ourselves in on Dhow # 4. Out dhow soon filled up with Indian families and we got a rather large surprise when the owner, and our host on board the dhow [View Full Entry]

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Well this was the day that we set off on our tour proper. I was a little worried that mum wouldn’t be well enough to cope with the trip after the day before. However I shouldn’t have worried at all. She is in fine fettle today, whilst I am more than a little exhausted. I was the one who needed a nap when we got to our destination today. We set off from the ranches at about 10am in the morning and took the emirates road up the country towards Ras Al Khaimah. I was surprised that I wasn’t being asked [View Full Entry]

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Day 2 of the Ade tour was a little bit more busy than day one. As always with the elder component of the Ade family, they were up frightfully early cleaning the villa that we are staying in. A friend of mine from work has been kind enough to let us use his villa while we are in Dubai as he is off in the south of france for the holiday season. Little does poor Dave know that he has the Ade family staying in his villa and that it will therefore be cleaned to within a micron of its structure [View Full Entry]

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