After several hours out in the car outside of Jeddah, we returned to the hotel to use hotel’s pool and sauna facility. It was a waste of time as the former was cold and the latter lukewarm. The showers were cold too. We gave up pretty quickly to chill in the room instead.
Returning the car across the road was meant to be about a 4.4km drive. One little mistake joining the main road meant we had missed the U-turn necessary for the drive, resulting in a drive around a whole big block or at least 12km.
At the car return, we followed the Budget return signs. As it turned out, we had parked on the wrong floor. We had sensed something was wrong as there were no staff there. The ladies in the office say it happens all the time but no worries, the boys will check and shift the car.
We took a car to the old city once again for a final wander around 1730. We repeated a lot of sites but there’s so much to absorb, sometimes it feels new. After over an hour, we started to consider dinner. With not much around the old city, we jumped on the simple eatery of scrambled eggs, liver, meat which we mopped up with local bread.
We spotted a French couple looking a little lost, looking for some sustenance. We helped them make some dinner choices and they joined us at our table. Eric is such a good proxy-host for Saudi Arabia. He gave them lots of tips to smoothen their upcoming journey around the big country.
Our simple dinner.
To get a car back, I wanted to get somewhere accessible to the car if it was coming from outside the old city. The area was blocked by people praying on the footpaths. Out of respect, we didn’t intrude and some cars stopped as well.
After a little wait, we continued to a suitable spot. It turned out to be an tiringly long wait for a car to arrive and return us to our hotel around for E’s final night.