Articles tagged with "Saudi Arabia"
Saudi Arabia suits older travelers well in the cool season and badly outside it. The distances want flying rather than driving, and the culture of hosting is genuinely an advantage.
Saudi Arabia has built an enormous amount very recently, and new build here means step-free by default. The heritage sites are sand, loose stone and steps, and no amount of planning changes that.
The Gulf story is usually told as one of departure. Jeddah is the opposite: a city whose population, cooking and architecture were built by communities from across Asia, Africa and the Middle East who came and stayed.
The Saudi calendar runs on two systems at once. The religious dates move every year against the Gregorian calendar; the new cultural seasons are fixed, enormous and very recent.
A short list of things that are genuinely required, a longer list of things that are simply good manners, and an honest account of the laws a visitor should know before booking.
Saudi food is regional and communal. The Hejaz cooks like a port, the Najd cooks like the interior, and the east cooks with the Gulf. All of it arrives on one dish in the middle.
What the British government actually restricts in Saudi Arabia is a strip along one frontier, measured in kilometres rather than drawn around provinces. Here is where the line runs and what the rest of the advice says.
Saudi Arabia is a very large country with a small number of places most visitors want, and the sensible answer is a mix of domestic flights, a driver, and Riyadh’s new metro.
The Saudi dress code is a legal expectation rather than a suggestion, and it applies to men as well as women. It also happens to be the right way to dress for the climate.
The Saudi riyal is pegged to the US dollar, which makes budgeting unusually predictable. Cards work almost everywhere. Here is what to arrange before you fly.