Jeddah’s Corniche

Saying goodbye

E leaves today for Riyadh for some time with friends before returning home.  We ate the buffet breakfast together early before I ordered him a car to the airport.

This trip, I’ve been lucky to have found three great travel companions:  first the two schoolfriends while in Japan and E in Saudi.

E appears very God-sent:

• While I have little experience driving on the “other” side of the road, I don’t think I could have coped in Saudi cities with highways and slip-roads totalling 14 lanes in both directions (eg. 4 lanes on high way plus 3 lanes slip-road each way). Add to that: giant roundabouts with u-turns before them and crazy drivers.  He had lived in the Gulf before and was familiar with these kinds of roads.
• We like so much of the same things: travel, languages, spicy food.  He said that travelling with me is like travelling with himself.
• He has extensive knowledge on history and archaeology which he was kind to share. We were full-on busy most of the time and I couldn’t keep up reading about the places we were heading to until sometimes afterwards.

 
We appear only to be “not on the same page” on very few things:

• I like air-conditioning where he prefers to be without. [Edit:  I only found out that was an understatement as he hates it.  He had made a large compromise to let me have it on.  He would even do without it during the hottest periods in the Gulf and south India.]
• He is an archaeology buff with qualifications to boot. His interest is so deep that he sometimes takes off without telling me when there is something highly interesting.
• He works using Maps.me and sees the flaws of Google Maps. For me, I use the latter, bearing in mind its limitations.
• I can walk quickly but slow down to appreciate beautiful things and absorb it. However, he’s much faster and has to slow down consciously for me.  Walking at a slower pace seems to stress his old knees.
• He thinks I speak too loudly when talking to him. It’s from over 3 decades with someone who no longer listens to me but turns right off when I speak.

 
New Corniche

I had some adjustment to being alone.  I’m quite an introvert but it was quite a sudden change from being with a new friend (and driver) for 24/7 for 3 weeks to being alone in a large American-style city which isn’t pedestrian-friendly and not set up with cheap public transport.

I had hardly turned on my laptop during the whole time in Saudi and I spent the first half of the morning catching up on a few things.  By 1000, I realised it would be too late to go to the museum, as it closes in the afternoon and reopens in the evening.

I then stayed in the room till about 1430, departing by car to Jeddah’s new corniche (as opposed to the Lake Arbaeen or the waterfront area closer to the city in comparison to the new corniche).   This was my first taste of Jeddah beyond the old city.

I was taken aback by how beautiful it was because E had told me that different parts were not contiguous and some parts required booking and payment.  I think he must have been somewhere completely different.

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Eclectic Museum

After about 90 min walking on the Corniche and a snack-lunch, I departed by another car to the Al Taybat International City Museum of Science and Information, getting there just before 1700.

This was a complex of beautifully-preserved Hijazi-style buildings that can be admired from the outside.  Inside one main building there were four floors of exhibits in dozens of rooms on very eclectic of subjects ranging from Islam, Saudi, its regions, architectural styles, models of well-known mosques, brassware, traditional costumes, specific art forms, random modern art, t-shirts, food, even plastic-ware etc.

I could have spent hours in here but there was only so much I could absorb having eaten nearly nothing since my early breakfast.  About 90 mins, I ordered a car to take me back to my area.

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The driver turned out to be a woman in black with full veil.  Less than five years ago, she wouldn’t be able to leave the house unchaperoned or drive legally.  Saudi is changing quickly!  Since less than a year ago, I can now legally wear shorts but I’d look extremely out of place.

I got dropped off at some shops where I ordered a sandwich for dinner, opting to eat in.  I got promptly kicked out when they closed up for prayer and ate in an alley.