From Damascus, we reached Beirut in the evening on Saturday. Yesterday morning we took an Uber to the airport and boarded our Saudia flight to Jeddah.
A couple of hours later we were descending over the Arabian desert.
That's King Abdullah Sport City Stadium in the photo below... getting close to the Jeddah airport at this point.
The airport experience was interesting because the vast majority of international arrivals were umrah pilgrims wearing Ihram clothing. For men this is in essence two towels--not typical attire for an airport! But, in Jeddah (just an hour or so from Mecca) I suppose it is!
The airport also has a very large two-story aquarium in it.
We had a frustrating experience with Uber, but eventually got into a car and drove to our nondescript hotel.
Three royal faces greeted us in the lobby.
Even just driving from the airport we could tell that Jeddah is a very spread out city (more-or-less running parallel with the Red Sea coast) with a lot of cars and big roads.
The sun was setting as we reached our hotel room.
We freshened up quickly and got another Uber to head down to the corniche. At sunset the corniche is a very popular place to be for everyone--tourists (there are not very many), locals, families, friends, and so on.
The corniche is beautiful, although even with the sun setting it was very warm!
For some reason I was very surprised and excited to see Tim Hortons along the corniche. I found out there are well over 200 Tim's locations in the Middle East and well over 100 in Saudia Arabia alone, but I had no idea the Canadian icon was this well known and loved in this part of the world!
From Tim's, we walked north along the corniche until we found the Red Sea Mall--one of Jeddah's several large shopping malls. There is obviously a healthy middle class in Jeddah, and many of them evidently enjoy shopping in large, air-conditioned malls! The mall closes well after midnight, and at 21:30 it was still bustling. We ate dinner at the food court here and enjoyed browsing many of the stores, especially the Saudi hypermarket store Danube, which we visited twice!
This morning we woke up to our only full day in Jeddah. We took it easy in the morning (it was already hot!) and enjoyed coffees in a nicely air-conditioned cafe by our hotel. Around noon we summoned an Uber and headed south to the UNESCO-listed Al Balad neighbourhood, Jeddah's old city. The current state of Al Balad is perhaps best summarized with this photo of the most famous specific location within Al Balad, the Bab Makkah, or Mecca gate.
The gate is nicely restored, but isolated, surrounded by parked cars and construction, and I think the photo captures the desert sun and heat well. I have optimism that Al Balad will continue benefiting from Mohammed bin Salman's economic diversification efforts, but it will presumably take another year or two at least before it is really "ready" for tourism--and I assume it will never recover the life and authenticity it must have had at one time. Perhaps it serves as a cautionary tale for other Middle Eastern old cities like, say, Damascus.
As to Bab Makkah, for centuries it served as the main gateway through which pilgrims passed on their way to Mecca from the Red Sea port at Jeddah. Much of Al Balad's construction utilized coral from the Red Sea, and that is evident when you look at the bricks in the gate.
Through here, perhaps 75 kilometres or so away, is Mecca, across the desert.
Our Uber driver told us that "desert" there was once a residential neighborhood, but it was recently bulldozed. If this is the case, clearly the desert takes over fast, because I could see no evidence that it had ever been anything other than a flat, sandy expanse.
When we arrived at Al Balad the midday call to prayer occurred, and I captured some video.
Besides the gate, a few of the buildings in Al-Balad are nicely restored, and others much less so.
The tree in front of this building was once the only tree in all of Jeddah, which really brings home to what extent you are in the desert here!
There were few restaurants or cafes open, unfortunately, but we did find a cafe where we could enjoy some cold drinks and the air conditioning (it was 36 C outside!).
For lunch, though, we realized we would have to look elsewhere, so we called an Uber and headed to the Central Fish Market.
What an experience this was! Somehow fresh fish coming out of the Red Sea was not what I thought about when we came to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, but here we were, amidst the sights and smells and sounds of fish and seafood and fishmongers.
This fishmonger, in particular, seemed enthusiastic about his catch, and wanted to pose for me with it!
Eating here was not as straightforward as I had hoped, and we made several wrong moves before figuring it out! First, you have to actually buy your own fresh seafood from one of the stalls, which we did not understand when we first sat down. So, we were sent back into the market to select our lunch. Prawns seemed an easy choice, and we managed to buy a dozen prawns for what amounted to a few dollars.
We did not, however, have the prawns appropriately prepared, so when we took the prawns to the counter for cooking, we were sent back. Our fishmonger seemed amused, but deveined our prawns for us.
For a few riyals the cooks grilled the prawns, and you can order rice and salad and bread on the side.
It all made for a delicious, interesting, memorable, and very affordable meal!
We were late eating lunch, and lingered over it, so it was getting on in the afternoon by the time we were done. We decided we would spend our remaining hours in Jeddah back at the corniche, albeit quite a bit further south from where we had been last night.
This location is the Al Hamra corniche, where as last night was the "New Jeddah" corniche. The Al Hamra corniche is directly across from the Al Salam Royal Palace, and the spot where the King Fahad fountain can be seen. For some reason the fountain was not operating, which is too bad because it is apparently quite something, but we enjoyed our time watching the sunset here nonetheless.
Actually, the sunset watching was wonderful, but so, too, was people watching--Jeddah obviously really enjoys their corniche, especially in the evening.
I am typically reticent to photograph people, but somehow I could not resist some surreptitious photos of the traditionally dressed Saudis along the corniche. I do not think I have ever been anywhere there is so clearly one basic outfit men and women wear in public. Obviously not everyone wears the same thing, but a good portion of men are in white often with the white and red checkered keffiyeh, and even a higher percentage of women are in all black niqabs.
Besides watching people walk by or sit on the lawn and relax, another interesting aspect of corniche culture was at the evening call to prayer, we realized there are permanent large prayer rugs that are unrolled for people to pray. A significant portion of people at the corniche joined in the prayers, men lining up beside men and women beside women. I was respectful enough in this case to not take pictures, but it was very interesting to watch.
From the corniche we walked inland along Palestine Street to a restaurant for dinner before Ubering back to the hotel. Tonight is our last night here in Saudi and tomorrow we head to Cairo.
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