I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks
Wednesday, January 3, 2024
Jeddah
The view from the Corniche. That small gray blur of a building on the far left will be the tallest in the world when it's completed, just over a kilometer in height.
It's impossible to overstate the amount of money pouring into Jeddah right now. Construction is everywhere—new hotels, museums, public buildings. Some of it is because of Vision 2030, the ambitious plan spearheaded by the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to diversify the economy and transform Saudi Arabia into an investment powerhouse and global hub.
Opening the country to tourism in 2019 was part of this plan; though the tourism infrastructure is obviously not really in place yet. You still need a visa, and we had to go through immigration and get our passports stamped before we could leave the port. And for reasons I don't really understand, we have to get an exit stamp when we come back to the ship today, or we won't be able to leave the ship in Yanbu tomorrow. It's all very cumbersome, and yesterday's tour in Jeddah was not very interesting either: a long drive past a lot of construction sites and fifteen minutes on the Corniche where the big attraction is a giant JEDDAH sign.
Today is a walking tour of the old city and that, I hope, should be better.
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January
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- Our Days of Bliss
- Not anachronistic at all
- More blues and greens
- Blues and greens
- Rawasheen
- Saturday reflections
- Building and rebuilding Jeddah
- The green Red Sea
- Back to Jeddah
- The Seven Wonders of the World
- Stations of the cross
- And there were goats
- View from the top
- Another day, another monastery
- Déjà vu all over again
- Sunday bird blogging
- Saturday reflections
- Cats in Greece
- Random things I saw at the monastery
- Icons
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- The refectory
- The Bullet Tree
- Arkadi Monastery
- Random things I saw in Rethymno
- More overlays of history
- Rethymno
- Cats in Greece
- Random things I saw in Olympia
- Bases of Zanes
- Temple of Hera
- The pediments
- Temple of Zeus
- Olympia museum
- Leaving Jeddah
- Inside the tomb
- Treasury of Atreus
- View from the citadel
- The Lion Gate
- Mycenaean mythology
- Mycenae
- I have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon
- Epidaurus
- Arachova
- Random things from Delphi
- The Sibyl
- The Treasury of Athens
- The Sacred Way
- Omphaloi
- Delphi
- Astronomy Tuesday
- Aqaba
- Sunday bird blogging
- Cats in Saudi Arabia
- Saturday reflections
- Yes, this is Saudi Arabia
- A Saudi family
- I love teenage girls
- Lawrence House
- Coffee break
- For example
- And for the men
- Abayas for sale
- How to dress in Saudi Arabia
- Speaking of wealth
- Grandmother
- Jeddah lighthouse
- Jeddah
- Street photography, Suez style
- Another way across the canal
- The delta side
- El Ferdan closeup
- The Sinai side
- The delta versus the Sinai
- Egyptian dream continued, plus bridge
- Dreaming in Egypt
- A change in the weather
- The Friendship Bridge
- It's not just the convoys
- Entering the canal
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