I love and hate the photos in this post because they show what awesomely (awful) ornate furniture you can buy here, but they don’t even come close to capturing how glittery, shiny, and over the top everything is.
Back when we went to pick out our new mattress, Josh, the baby, and I wandered around the home furnishings section of the store and furnished our imaginary house. This futon-like couch was actually something I could see myself using. I wanted to get a better picture of it, but the baby kept crawling away.
We tried to imagine how much money you’d have to have to purchase a purple glitter dining room set.
We actually really loved this sofa set. It looked like something you’d find in a sultan’s tent, but it was really comfortable. Completely not our style with all the beading and gold trim, but we were cracking each other up with the idea of buying it, putting it in our house where it would totally stand out and pretend that it didn’t look at all out of place next to our IKEA furniture when guests came over.
There was room after room after room of the most ornate living room sets I’ve ever seen. And they weren’t cheap. It will be really tempting to come back to America with a piece of furniture that is really over the top — that’s one way that Oman and Egypt are drastically different. Egypt is utilitarian while Oman is flashy. A gate in Egypt is just a gate, here in Muscat it is created from scrolling metalwork and painted gold with black accents. In Egypt the abayas are all plain black, here they are rhinestoned, beaded, trimmed, and trendy.
