Ramada Hotel And Suites Al Khobar

... But I later realized that the hills didnt actually sweep into the town, they were outside the town. (Pardon my illuision!). We entered the SAPTO busstand there which was quite the opposite of lonesome-boy it was packed! It was there that I made a call to Manoj in Jeddah. He asked me where I was and I said that I was entering the last lap of my journey and that I was in Al Taif. He said" Dont miss having a good look - it is like the hill station, Ooty, in India!"<br><br>The ...

17/10<br>Time to be honest. We're heading home.<br>The last country is a stop-over in Bahrain (for 2 hours) as we fly through the night back to England<br>We wanted to surprise a few folks so have sneaked home quietly.<br><br>Never the less, Bahrain International Airport looked very nice at midnight, all lit up. This small island state lies in the Persion Gulf alongside saudi ...

Not much - just waiting at the airport for the flight! Bahrain was both nicer and more boring than I thought, the weather is a lot more forgiving but it's not worth more than about 3 days exploration tops.. Unless you like to get really nittygritty :P<br>

... and also not having any male family members with us [women are not allowed to cross solo, nor are they allowed to drive in Saudi!], we didn't even bother to attempt to cross the real border to go into Damman [although I wanted to..], so Saudi exploration will have to wait until I'm married :P [I have no brothers and my dad would much rather go anywhere else but a hot desert!]<br>

... wanting to come into Bahrain and next to nothing going into Saudi - apparently it's easier to access alcohol in Bahrain! :P<br><br>Our last stop was the Bahrain Fort [aka Portuguese Fort]. Nothing particularly new to me, seen plenty of them, but it was weird knowing the whole area it was on was reclaimed land from the sea!<br><br>Today, my mum had a conference so I was left to do as I pleased. I had a walk around the Juffair neighbourhood which was where my hotel was ...

... skin tone ("usually they are very white" he said).  I seemed to get a lot of stares and confused looks, so I think people were trying to figure out what I was (since my clothes and other looks probably didn't fit one culture very well).<br><br>So I sat, waiting for boarding, trying not to sit next to Westerners or speak [English] to avoid raising suspicion among people who may be heading to with me to Yemen.  There was only one other Westerner in the private boarding area.  A group ...

... it wasn&#8217;t until a bit later and our timing was fine.<br><br>Work---things continued to get better. Still material issues but we were making good product in the afternoon. Needed a roller with the rigidity of rubber or hard foam to get more consistency. Lunch was chicken salads from Kudu (like the chicken on Saturday), which I&#8217;m pretty sure disappointed everyone, especially Ali. Maybe some of my earlier comments about me not eating as much in Saudi got to ...

... Farhad generally beats Saad pretty handily, though Saad taught him the game (Farhad joined an online squash lessons site and improved his game). I was also surprised at the screaming of &#8220;YES!!!&#8221; and minor smack talk from Saad during this game given what I had read about the Islamic value of humility, but was glad that there was a place for competition. Saad later volunteered that he liked to build a little tension to get a better game out ...

... lots of types of croissants and sweet pastries (I'm "not a dessert guy"), some hot food, breads (including Mediterranean/Middle Eastern flat bread), cheese, cold meat, hummus, and salads. The highlights were definitely the poached egg on top of bread wafer (so good and like an over-medium egg, but so much better---need to make this at home, but probably need some type of cookie-cutter type egg holder), fried potatoes, soupy bean and ...

Flight from Athens to Bahrain was unremarkable. However, my first taste of culture shock occurred as I enterered the Bahrain airport. In case you do not know, Bahrain is an island in the Middle East. There are signs in English and Arabic. Turkish style toilets (squat style in the floor with a hand sprayer like at your kitchen sink...enough said!) There are also western style toilets and signs for mens ...