On our 12 day tour of Saudi Arabia, we visited Dammam, Jeddah, Medina, Al Ula and Riyadh. We looked into visiting Abha and Jizan too, upon the recommendation of a Saudi rep at the World Expo in Dubai, but couldn’t quite figure out how to get there.
To enter Saudi Arabia, we took a bus from Bahrain to Dammam, the headquarters of Saudi Aramco. There’s no reason touristically to visit Dammam, but it’s an easy entry point over land.
We stayed in Dammam for two nights at the DoubleTree by Hilton Dhahran and checked out a rather impressive mall across the street. Interestingly enough, I was dressed in a t-shirt, no head covering, and that was no problem, but Aaron was denied entrance because he was wearing shorts! So he had to run back to the hotel and change. You can read more about our experience in Saudi Arabia here.
Next we flew to Jeddah. Jeddah is home to a really interesting, albeit small, old town with heritage buildings made of coral. Many of the buildings are lopsided because coral, being porous, isn’t the most solid construction material, but this is exactly what distinguishes the historic quarter. You can a find snack vendors, an outdoor produce market, an extensive date shop, and even a sharia attorney inside the old town. We also wandered into a community art center, where we spoke with a young craftsman who is keeping traditional woodcarving alive.
From Jeddah we flew to Madinah, Islam’s second holiest city. A bus runs there too, but it was unclear whether they would sell tickets to non-Muslims, so we opted to just fly. Madinah only opened to non-Muslims in recent years. The Mosque of the Prophet is still only open to Muslims, but we got to walk the grounds. It happened to be Ramadan while we were there, so that felt extra special. We also went to the Dar Al Madinah Museum, which houses miniature replicas of Mohammed’s life and journey. The museum’s guided tour in English provided an informative introduction to Islam and all of its holy sites. Even for non-religious people like us, Madinah was very much worth going to.
From Madinah we rented a car and drove to the ancient city of Al Ula to see the Nabatean tombs there. If you’re familiar with Petra in Jordan, the same Nabatean civilization carved tombs in Al Ula, many facing towards Petra, the capital of their kingdom. Al Ula has its own airport, but the drive is not difficult. We did get scammed over a month later by Budget Rent-a-Car. They had kept our credit card info on file and ran a completely new charge, so we recommend using a credit card in Saudi Arabia that you can close right after you leave.
After Al Ula, we drove back to Medina and flew to Riyadh. In retrospect, I would look into the option of flying directly out of Madinah, as we really didn’t enjoy Riyadh. It was a big concrete morass, too hot and spread out to explore. You can go to the Edge of the World, but it’s still a 2.5 hour drive from Riyadh. I think we had heat exhaustion by then, so we had no motivation to make that trek.
If we did it over, we’d skip Riyadh and Damman and make it a shorter trip, visiting only Jeddah, Medinah, and Al Ula.
