Riyadh's 3 Mesmerizing Side Trips

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Asir Mountains
This hilly region is near the country's boundary with Yemen. The local chief, Abha, a small town ringed by dim mountains, felt cool as I promenaded through its souk and chatted with stall holders selling annoy of frankincense and myrrh, beads, gowns and brightly colored baskets.
The key attraction here is the reinstated village of Rijal Alma. Its high, tower-like houses were built approximately 300 years antecedent, acting as watchtowers. One house is immediately a repository with apartments and exhibiting jewellery, harvest tools and even a bridal carriage charted to go on a camel's back.
Medain Saleh
Medain Saleh namely the country's key tourist attraction. Located in the north-west,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the 2,000-year-old Nabataean tombs, set in the stark abandon, are a stunning sight. Imagine visiting the rock-cut building of Petra, in Jordan, yet without the throngs. This was the second metropolis of the Nabataeans, who established their 131 rock-cut mausolea soon later they had finished go above Petra.
The Nabataeans, whose empire lasted from approximately 600 BC to AD 300, sited both cities on the same commerce path and Medain Saleh would once have been a bustling city, although as in Dir'aiyah, the houses have long disappeared. The tombs are amazing - numerous are slit so tall in the rock that you must ascend a rickety ladder to enter them to look the burial niches cut into the sandstone.
Many tombs have inscriptions in the Aramaic language over their doors and these are translated into English, explaining who owned the tomb. One of the maximum striking is the pretty row of tombs phoned Qasr Al-Bint. You can also brain along the dunes to the tomb of Qasr Farid, while it corners a glowing pink at sundown.
Jeddah
Souk Al-Alawi is the star attraction here, a warren of lessen streets in the antique town where I spent a merry morning shopping because leather slippers and beautiful wool shawls. The prices are fixed, so haggling is not welcome, but generally,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the atmosphere in Jeddah is far extra loosened than in conservative Riyadh. Here, I spotted women going out without men accompanying them, and periodically without dressing their headscarves.
We finished our voyage with a splendid supper of prawn and hamour, a fish caught locally, at the Al-Nakhil canteen on the Corniche. After supper, we always enjoyed smoking the apple-flavored shisha water pipes and drenching up the atmosphere of this buzzy restaurant, where families dine and talk until 3am in the morning.