This trip started like many of our trips do, with an offhand family suggestion that snowballs quickly. In this case, Lydia discovered that you can get a kids drivers license at Legoland, which suddenly became a necessity. The catch is that it’s only offered to kids under 14 and she was turning 14 in November. They have a week off of school in October, so we started planning. There are several Legoland locations and Dubai sounded like the best new-to-us city on the list. Oman kept coming up on reels and we didn’t want to spend a full week in Dubai, so it seemed like a natural pairing, despite how different they are. Funnily enough, after we booked the flights and hotels, we learned that Lydia was in fact too tall for the race cars, so we didn’t end up at Legoland at all.
Dubai
There’s a direct flight from Lisbon to Dubai. It’s quick and overnight so we were a bit jet-lagged but still hit the ground running. Edie has a good friend that moved (back) to Dubai over the summer, so we arranged for an all-day playdate for her upon arrival. The rest of us, plus a friend Genevieve who was crazy enough to join us, spent most of the day at The View on Palm Jumeirah. It’s an observatory at the base of the palm with amazing views and an indoor-outdoor bar where we had a few drinks. In the evening we collected Edie and had delicious Thai food in a mall near the hotel.
The next morning we had breakfast also near the hotel and then went to the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. There are multiple observatory decks with different price points. I went to the higher floor (148) by myself while the rest of the family went to the main tourist one (floor 124). My ticket had a separate, much shorter, line so I’d recommend it as an upgrade if you’re willing to go that high. We also learned that the line mostly goes away in the afternoon because the prices are slightly higher. We reconnected with Genevieve, had a quick snack at the mall in the tower, and then set out to explore Old Dubai. We started out at the Souk Al Seef where we had a delicious lunch at Restaurant Al Seef. We strolled through the market, did some shopping, and ultimately ended up on the river bank where we lined up to take the ferry to the more famous markets. It was a nice, relaxing, and quick ferry ride that takes you right to the older souks. We started at the farther Gold Souk and worked our way back to the Spice Souk.
The next day was a Monday, and it was our theme park day. Since Lydia couldn’t get her license at Legoland we decided to go somewhere else. Knowing that Dubai is extremely hot, we opted for the world’s largest indoor theme park, IMG Worlds of Adventure. It had a fun Halloween theme, with characters in Halloween costumes, and even a haunted house. Unfortunately Edie’s friend was in school and couldn’t join us, but we weren’t thinking when we booked it that nearly all kids would be in school. That meant the theme park was nearly empty! The girls had their choice of any and all rides with zero line. At one point they rode one of their favorite rides so many times in a row that the ride operator told them to take a break. While we were at the theme park, Emily and Genevieve explored other parts of Dubai, including a recent addition called the Dubai Frame, which is a building that looks like an ornate picture frame and you can go up and walk over it. We met back up for dinner and drinks at Qwerty.
Our last morning, a friend recommended the Miracle Garden, so half of us started there while the others went to the Butterfly Garden next door. It’s full of insane multiple-stories high flower arrangements, including a full size airplane(!), covering a very large area. We finished at the Miracle Garden first so we joined up with everyone else and got to see both gardens. That was a wrap for Dubai! We got our bags and headed to the airport.
Oman
While Dubai is technically in the Middle East, it’s full of tourists and skyscrapers so it often just felt like any other big city. On the other hand, Oman felt much more genuine for the region. We stayed at the Fraser Suites, which has an amazing view of the Mohammed Al Ameen Mosque, which is lit up at night. After checking in, we went to a top-rated restaurant called Ramssa Omani for an incredible dinner. The owner lived in the US for many years so he was excited to chat with Americans for a bit.
Our first full day in Muscat started with a guided tour around the city. There isn’t really a “center” or downtown in Muscat, so we figured having a guide take us around would orient us. Our first stop was at the Grand Mosque, the only place that really cared about conservative women’s clothing (we packed a lot of pants and long sleeves just in case but didn’t need it). Here though, they were serious. There were people in military garb that inspected everyone before they could enter. Jaime had to button up her shirt all the way to cover a speck of her neck peeking out from behind the scarf. Emily had a head covering with buttons on it which confused the guards and they made her go buy a new one from the shop on-site. Next, we went to the Mutrah Souq for some shopping, and were entertained by our guide fake-haggling with his shop-owner friend to get us the best price. Across town we stopped for photos of Al Alam Palace and the surrounding Portuguese forts. Last up, we went to the Royal Opera House, which had its own guide for an interesting and quick tour. After the tour, besides meals, we also spent a good amount of time swimming at the hotel in their rooftop pool.
The next morning we went to a marina down the coast and spent a majority of the day on a boat tour to the Daymaniyat Islands. Our boat broke down as we were leaving the marina so we lost about 30 minutes waiting for the backup boat to fuel up and get us. We still had a lovely day in the water, doing lots of snorkeling at two different locations, saw lots of turtles, and ate dinner on the boat. Apparently if we were there a week or two later we could have seen baby turtles hatching… next time!
For our last two days, we left most of our stuff at the hotel and went deep into the interior of Oman, visiting a lot of historical sites and spending the night in the middle of the desert. Our first stop was the Wadi Bani Khalid, an oasis with several different pools snaking through a canyon. A few of us went swimming while the others hiked around (side note, there are ZERO bathrooms here or anywhere around here). Continuing into the interior, we had lunch at Jizan Restaurant in Bidiyah. It gets more “traditional” the deeper you go, so here we had to sit in a “family section” where women and children were allowed, though they did have six foot walls surrounding every table. Shortly after lunch, we stopped at a shop to get our tires delated, apparently a requirement to drive in the desert (who knew!). We met with a camp escort where the town ended and the desert began, but he was waiting for another group to arrive so we decided to venture out on our own.
Upon entering the Wahiba Sands desert, there were a lot of trucks just driving up and down the steep dunes, having a blast. It was so entertaining to watch as we’d never seen anything like it. There were several camps right there amongst the chaos but we kept driving further and further into the desert. The “roads” were fading away and it turned into just driving wherever you could make forward progress. We drove seemingly aimlessly up and down sand dunes until we came across a man on an ATV near a very fancy camp of private houses on stilts. We briefly thought that was where we were staying, until the ATV driver made a hard left away from that camp, deeper into the desert. We followed him and came to our camp site a few minutes later. It was 10 large tents literally in the middle of nowhere, and we still somehow had Western toilets and private showers at every tent. We climbed some dunes for an amazing sunset and then had a communal dinner with a few other groups staying there. The camp owner was extremely friendly and the food was delicious. We did some stargazing before having a very peaceful and quiet night.
We woke up early to also enjoy a desert sunrise, then had breakfast and packed up. Our last adventure in the desert was going “dune bashing” where you drive very fast through the dunes, weaving back and forth and up and down along the top ridges of the dunes. It was so much fun! On the way back towards Muscat, we stopped in the cultural center of Oman, Nizwa. We shopped at their main Central Souq, explored the nearby Nizwa Fort, and fed some camels and goats. We also had three more stops at a beautiful Hanging Terraces viewpoint, an ancient abandoned village at Wadi Bani Habib, and a mountain viewpoint overlooking Muscat.
That was it for Oman — a place we spent more time in that any other recent trip and still felt like we didn’t see enough. It was an amazing experience and the people were genuinely friendly at every step of the way. Highly recommended!