Riyadh the capital of Saudi was our first stop; we visited Ad-Diriyah (Saudi early capital), which inscribed by UNESCO world heritage. It was the home of the first Saudi rulers, the place has a special architectural style, colorful doors and it is well restored. We couldn’t explore the old Diriyah due to the maintenance and development project that are running there, but we will be coming back to explore it more in the near future!
Mecca The holy city of Islam, We consider ourselves lucky because we can visit this holy place. The city is forbidden for non-Muslims, more over it is very difficult to get a visa or permission for the non GCC nationals to visit Mecca. Some of them wait for years only to get the permission. In the contrary we don’t require any visa or permission, and we can visit Mecca easily any time during the year. We did Umrah as a must do when entering Mecca. Apart from the fascinating monument of Kaaba, Mecca city has a sad fact that it has really dirty environment that help in spreading many diseases. More care is needed to handle the huge number of people visiting the place during the year. We took a small tour to the neighborhoods around Kaaba and we witnessed a shocking reality!!
Ta’if is only one hour away from Mecca, but surprisingly the weather is totally different, when we left Mecca the temperature was 40 C compared to 23 C in Taif, this is why it is described as the summer capital of Saudi. It was a great escape after spending 2 days in crowded Mecca. We really enjoyed Taif, it has many to offer ,we have seen the rose plantation and visited the oldest rose water factory in town (Gadhi rose factory), we had the chance to see some historical houses in Taif but only from outside as all of them were locked and closed!!.
Jeddah has two sides of the story… In one side you can see all the modern and huge shopping malls, luxury houses and clean streets. On the other side you can see very poor community of beggars, homeless people, many immigrant of different nationalities specially Africans.
“Al-Bald” or historical area in Jeddah is one of the main attractions in the city. This place contains lovely Coral Houses, Old Souq, and other historical sites.
Medina or the city of the prophet is the second holy place in Saudi after Mecca, it stores the prophet mosque that includes prophet Mohammed grave. In an attempt to discover more about the history of the city we started to search for the historical places and we were so disappointed. This city is supposed to tell a lot about the Islamic history, unfortunately most of the historical places have been destroyed except for few old mosques. Old neighborhoods and houses are removed having 5 stars hotels and new roads built instead. A few left to tell about the history of Medina. We had our best meal in Medina; we visited the fish market that is 1 Km from the prophet mosque and where you can have a variety of sea food options. People and tourist are coming from everywhere at lunch time, the fish is being fried in really big pans that is full of oil, after taking out the fish from the pan the cooker takes a bunch of spices and put it over, the taste is really good Yum yummy.
Khyber two hours far away from Medina. We were very enthusiastic to discover this ancient place, especially when we read that many pieces found their back to the stone ages!. Unfortunately, our plan did not go as we wanted; While trying to get in the old Khyber area, we have been threatened by civil guy! He realized that we are from Bahrain through our car signage. He was an extremist and started questioning us in weird way asking different questions about religion and politics! (Why we are here?, what we are doing exactly? and what is our religion roots!!?). He was threatening us in many means (like he might attack us or beat us if we disagree with his way of thinking!) at the end we could calm him down and continue our way. We left the place without exploring it.
Al-Ula is one of the best cities that we visited in Saudi. The place is really clean, calm and peaceful. Moreover it is rich of history more than we expected! Farms and palm trees are everywhere. We moved very easily and people were very nice and welcoming. Al-Ula considered as one of the remarkable historical sites in the world, mainly because of the existence of Mada’in Saleh.
This museum contains many antiquites and ancient artifacts that highlight the civilization of the Arabian Peninsula from the Stone Age to the present.
It exhibits the distinctive patterns of Islamic cities in the past, the village was built in the 7th century.
Natural rock formation that lock like huge elephant.
This is a rocky frontage which contains lions graves dating back to Al-Lehyania reign.
A volcanic mountain bordering Al-Ula city.
Madain Saleh … For many people that we met, they dream to visit Petra. So we were very lucky to reach Madain Saleh. Many people don’t know that Madain Saleh exists! Madain Saleh is described as “sister city of Petra” and it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site. We can describe the place as an open museum to explore, the site is amazing and full of wonders, we were amazed with the tombs that are carved into the mountains and how it remains until today despite of erosion, also the desert and the remarkable and unique rock formation. We can talk a lot on how amazing the place is but we invite you to visit it and see it yourself.
