So what do I do instead? Explore! This past 3-day weekend, several friends came to visit from another KSA city. Their expectations were quite low (all they asked for was beach and Al Baik, the local KFC-like chain), so we started from there. As you might expect, Saudi laws and culture do not mesh with beach culture, so public beaches are not really available. Instead, and ingeniously, hotels and private clubs buy up beachfront property, wall it off, and only allow entry to an exclusive group of patrons. You can buy membership (at a high price), ou can pay entry at the hotels and share the beach with tourists, or you can be invited by beach club members as guests. We did the latter. We still paid an entrance fee (a relatively steep $25), but it was well worth it. Once you enter the gates, you're transported to paradise. The beaches are sandy and pristine; the water is deep aqua and heavenly; and there are plenty of palm trees, loungers, and umbrellas. Plus there's even a snack bar operating during Ramadan! One of my colleagues and her husband own a share in this particular beach club, which also gets them use of a cabin. So we had a kitchen, bathroom, and covered deck for lounging. There was even a man-made island covered with palm trees that you could swim out to. I felt like I was in the Caribbean or somewhere similar. It was amazing. The water was VERY warm, even hot, but it felt so luxurious to just float in the Red Sea. We played beach volleyball and petanque, listened to music, and grilled all afternoon/evening. A perfect day. Amazingly, the humidity was kept at bay by a sea breeze, so the weather was tolerable - enjoyable, even. I knew about the private beaches before getting here, but this one exceeded all of my expectations. A little slice of tropical paradise, only 30 minutes north of Jeddah.
The rest of the weekend was filled with lots of relaxing and napping, a bit of textile shopping (apparently thobes and abayas are cheaper in Jeddah), eating, and exploring. A couple of my colleagues arranged for some friends/contacts to take use around Balad, this time in the evening. We started out with a hotel iftar and moved on to the famous Nassif House for a private tour. Nassif House, detailed in a previous post, is fascinating inside as well as out. It's several stories high, with winding staircases, mazes of rooms, and plenty of amazing artifacts. The stairways on the first few levels are very wide and have short, long steps - to accommodate camels of course! It was great to see the mashrabiya from the inside, to experience where King Abdelaziz lived in the beginning of KSA's modern history, and to marvel at the architecture. We ended our tour at the top of the house, where a wooden room (akin to a New England widow's walk), open to the elements with windows all around, offers perhaps the best view of the city. We arrived at the top just in time for the adhaan for isha, the call to prayer for the evening prayer. From that vantage point we could hear dozens of mosques, and the eerie but beautiful sounds echoed and beckoned to the city's faithful. We relaxed and had tea - a beautiful evening. Following that, we toured another older home in Balad, visited a 500-year old water cistern, and experienced this area of the city at night. One of my favorite scenes was observing a sleeping butcher, sprawled out on the counter so he seemingly lined up with hanging slabs of meat. My photos are blurry, but I'll try to post anyway. (We also had iftar at Nassif House last night, so I was able to get some daylight pictures of Jeddah as well.)
Hot, exhausted, but satisfied, we all slept well that night. The final day was a chance to relax, eat Al Baik, and bid farewell to our friends. Several of us ended the evening with yet another iftar, this time at a hip downtown restaurant. It lived up to its reputation with amazing food and even better ambience. We relaxed on low couches and chairs piled with pillows. Every meal should be that comfortable!
I'm now halfway through a short work week, with nine days off to look forward to. I plan to unpack, settle in a bit more, relax, do some shopping, and go diving! I am so excited to get back into one of my favorite activities; the diving here is affordable and extraordinary. I am hoping to go 2-3 times next week.
In other news, one of the cats now has a name! Gray kitten is now known as Griffin. No name yet for white kitten; I feel I'm close to deciding, though. Stay tuned...
(One of these days I'll learn how to properly load pictures and arrange them in posts. Until then, bear with me.)
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