Friday, January 30, 2009

Winter Wonderland

Gosh - all that political heavy lifting has left me winded. Or perhaps it's the long, lazy brunch we enjoyed today, Mr. Muscato and I, with our friends The Archaeologists. Mr. Muscato tried out the New Look, accessorizing it with a white panama hat and little round sunglasses that together gave him the air of King Farouk going incognito; I went less flamboyantly (for once) in a bright striped shirt and khakis.

We went to our fair Sultanate's recently renovated ultra-deluxe hostelry, an almost bewilderingly luxurious affair housed in one of the ugliest buildings to be found anywhere in a region not short on those.

At least the gardens are beautiful, as is the new infinity pool. The buffet featured bountiful goodies of all sorts, high among them a delightful assortment of dead pig, including both parma ham and excellent German sausage. Mr. Muscato is appalled, I am replete, and the last we saw of The Archaeologists, they were polishing off a second bottle of Prosecco on their front porch.

Life is good.

(The snap, by the bye, is my attempt to artsy-up one from Mr. Muscato's camera phone. The original, more sweeping pic included a highly uninspiring bunch of British tourists who for a little while came close to spoiling the view.)

4 comments:

  1. it looks and sounds gorgeous! and much warmer than chicago! are they real archaeologists? how exciting!

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  2. What, no slush? Pretty dreamy parade of palms, although you, perhaps, get tired of them.

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  3. What? Do you think we'd hang around with a gang of faux-archaeologists? Of course they're real. Or so they claim. Now that I think of it, I've never seen any of them in a battered hat or unwrapping a mummy...

    As for getting tired of palms? It's odd, but even after a decade overseas, they remain for me - having been raised in a particularly unlovely, even arctic, northern town - a signfier of glamor and exotica, and I count myself lucky every time I see one.

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  4. lol,muscato! i'm glad they're real.you wouldn't want the faux ones...

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