The visit to the Oman Aquarium was an unexpected surprise.

We went there on one of the Eid days, it wasn’t busy at all.

It is Oman’s first Aquarium, you can access it by driving to Muscat Mall (in Seeb), quite a drive. You go into the Mall and the Aquarium is signalled with arrows. For 3 we paid 20 rials on the Silver tickets, as we didn’t want the Gold that has a guided tour. More details on the different packages here.

The Aquarium is medium-sized, do not expect the likes of Genoa Aquarium or Barcelona but you can see amazing evidence of how beautiful nature is.

It is built as a journey, the journey of Oman’s greatest explorer and cartographer, Ahmad Ibn Majid, it starts in Salalah, goes around Oman’s coast and then sails to Asia and Africa, so each section is a step in the journey.

I am not going to tell you everything in there, you need to see for yourself, I will say that the highlight was the penguins. They have 11 South African penguins, one is the baby born in there, named “Omani”.

You can see them swimming, they come to the glass to “perform” for visitors but also, if you arrived at feeding times you will have the chance to see them up close. They come out where in front of their tank and they are being fed in front of you. They are absolutely adorable!

There are small tanks where you can see fish schools swimming in their amazing choreography and there is also the huge tank where you can even see sharks, small ones.

Lots of tropical fish, turtles, all the cast of “Finding Nemo”, stingray, scorpions and even some snakes are just a few of the inhabitants of this amazing place.

Did you visit it? What was your favourite part?