Saudi Arabia

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The final set of Saudi pictures are from Yanbu.

There are actually three cities comprising Yanbu. Yanbu Al-Bahr is the main city on the Red Sea coast where the ship docked.  The other one we visited is Yanbu Al-Nakhal, a group of villages about an hour’s drive from the coast that used to be one of the hubs on the spice and incense route between Egypt and Yemen.

On The Road – arrieve – Saudi Arabia, part 4Post + Comments (14)

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More pictures from the walking tour in Al Balad, the old town in Jeddah.

On The Road – arrieve – Saudi Arabia, part 3Post + Comments (20)

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The second day in Jeddah I took a walking tour of Al Balad, the old town of Jeddah. It became a thriving port in the 7th century, and because it is less than 50 miles from Mecca, Al Balad was, and Jeddah is, a gateway city for pilgrims. The 650 buildings in the district—now a UNESCO World Heritage site—mostly date from the 19th century; many were built from blocks of coral carved out of the nearby Red Sea, with distinctive wooden balconies called rawasheen.

The tour was a little haphazard but this was so much more interesting than all the jewelry stores and construction sites on the previous day.

On The Road – arrieve – Saudi Arabia, part 2Post + Comments (17)

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I submitted several sets of pictures of my trip through the Suez Canal on New Year’s Eve a few weeks ago. The next few sets cover our stops in two Saudi Red Sea ports, Jeddah and Yanbu, before ending the cruise in Aqaba, Jordan. Fortunately, the Red Sea, at least where we were, was calm, although rumor had it that we were being guarded by one or more ships while we sailed.

I had never been to Saudi Arabia, and had never particularly wanted to go there.  And I doubt I will ever go back, but I am glad I saw a little of this very strange, but interesting, country.

Our first day in Jeddah I had signed up for an excursion to a desert city called Hegra, built by the same people who built Petra. It was expensive because you had to fly there, but the pictures I saw online were fascinating and I figured, When am I ever going to be in Saudi Arabia again? Unfortunately, but maybe not unsurprisingly, not enough people signed up and it was cancelled. So I found myself taking a last-minute tour of Jeddah’s corniche and shopping district that did turn out to be interesting, though not perhaps in the way the tour guides intended.

On The Road – arrieve – Saudi Arabia, part 1Post + Comments (27)