and came home with something fun for our house! I tried to take a picture of the sign displaying the temperature, but I didn’t want the ladies in the burqas to think I was taking a picture of them so I had to snap it quickly. I didn’t capture it, but it said 42 C at 5:30 in the evening, about 107 F.
I didn’t take any pictures in the sook because we were shopping for something specific and the easiest way to get the price jacked up on an item you want is to look like a tourist. As it was, we looked plenty touristy and every shop we passed I had people waving scarves and pashminas in my face saying, “3 rial. Very good price madame. Beautiful scarf for you.” It feels rude, but you just have to ignore them and keep walking or you’d never get anywhere.
I’m looking for some metal and glass lanterns, like these:
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| photo credit: maroque.co.uk |
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| photo credit: nj.com |
No luck on the lanterns yet. I mean, there were tons of lanterns, but they were all cheapy cheap or too expensive for something I suspected was made in China. I’m waiting to find some nice “real” ones before dropping any rial for them.
We did find something that I’ve been wanting since we got here:
two beautiful floor pillows. We were able to talk him down to 25 rial for both which was a good price since I had seen the large size for 30 each and they didn’t have all the beading and patchwork that these have. I think we’re going to go back and get one or two more since they’re great for sitting on, putting your feet up, and if you’re short on storage space, they work great to store excess clothing.
We are certainly not short on storage space and we don’t have much excess clothing, but they come unfilled and I was dying to use them. We don’t have any extra pillows or towels, but then I had the bright idea of taking all our jackets, jeans, sweatshirts and other warm clothes from Monterey and using those as filling. The large cushion took all those clothes, plus 5 beach towels. It is huge. I was trying to find cheap fabric or other stuffing material, but those items are all pretty expensive here (what isn’t?) and the clothing makes a nice, supportive cushion.
I had nothing left to stuff this smaller one, so I took all the leftover plastic grocery bags in the house and stuffed it as full as I could. It needs a lot more filling so that’s why it still looks slouchy and ready to topple over.
We had a great night of shopping, topped off by the only cheap thing we’ve found in Oman. The soft serve ice cream cones at McDonalds are only 100 baisa each (25 cents) so we hit the drive-through on the way home and for $1.25 made everyone happy. Next time we’ll have to get a 6th cone, since the boys had to take turns giving her bites of theirs since Camille kept yelling for more each time she finished a bite. I think we can afford it.