I joined an excursion organized by my language school today and visited 2 forts, a castle (which appeared no different from a fort to me), and a hot spring. I learned that visiting one, maybe two forts in Oman is enough for me.

We rode the school’s van/bus and had about 15 people. We drove about 45 minutes to the first stop on the tour. I was excited to see several groups of goats and camels wandering randomly on the roadside, but unfortunately, we were going too fast for me to get any pictures.

Most of the “on-the-road” photos I managed to get look like this:

Our first stop was Al Hazm castle. All the forts/castles had a lot of stairs, which were not always easy to navigate. One set of stairs would have had me stepping down a very narrow staircase, while also ducking under a low ceiling, making a sharp right turn and navigating around a cannon, all while trying not to trip on my voluminous pants. I backtracked out of that one and used a different set of stairs. Here’s Al Hazm castle:

After Al Hazm, we got back in the bus and drove a little more to Rustaq Fort, which was the least interesting of all the forts.

Next, we drove a little more to Nakhal hot springs, which sounds nice but wasn’t. The hot springs looked just like a small creek or stream, but they were crowded with families enjoying the weekend. It was pretty rowdy! I stepped in the water a little and it was warm. It was filled with tiny fish, which supposedly are the same fish used for those weird pedicures some places offer (no fish were willing to nibble my toes, though). We had brought Subway sandwiches, so we ate those while swarms of people splashed around. Oman has interesting Subway items, like “Chicken Tikka”.

Lastly, we went to Nakhal Fort, which was my favorite one. It was a little easier to navigate than the castle, but much more interesting than the second fort. Nakhal Fort was built right on a natural stone base, so you could see how the mountain was incorporated into the structure of the fort.