So yesterday was Al Masmak, but today is Ad-Diriyah! We mentioned it yesterday (with different spelling, we just go by the spelling we see on signs/online) as the capital of the early Saudi states, so, might as well check it out. And there’s a UNESCO world heritage site there, At-Turaif. AND it was recommended to us by the guys we shared the taxi with after the Real Madrid game. What could possibly go wrong? 

We step outside of our hotel and go to the mall to grab a metered taxi. Well… remember how just two sentences ago we asked what could go wrong? Apparently a lot. So, first tip, only get in a car that knows where they’re going. The taxi had never heard of this place even though it’s supposed to be super famous among Saudis (he was not Saudi, but had lived there many, many years). Why do we give you that advice…? Because of this:

The taxi driver just kept poorly following Google into more and more rain and more and more construction. Why do we say “poorly”? Because we often saw him skip turns and things like that. Sometimes he would say “I don’t think it’s that way” (without any clue as to where he was going) and others he wouldn’t say anything. He swore A LOT in English, so we understood everything. And to top it all off… we mentioned it was a metered taxi because those are the “best” as they can’t overcharge you… but if your taxi driver is utterly lost… it charges you a lot. And to top it all off, our maps application said to go a different way than his application… fiiiiinally we convinced him to just listen to us (even though we’re definitely not Saudis and didn’t really know where we were going) on how to get there and we got there. He wanted to drive a bit more to stop us off exaaaaactly at the entrance, but we wanted to get out before it got to 100 SAR (~37 dollars) but… then it’s plus tax so we paid around 115 SAR after about an hour of driving for what should have been a 20 minute trip…. Not the start we wanted for today…. Well, there’s nothing to do but keep going! 

Here we found out you need online tickets to get into the site. So we leave you with that information so that you show up prepared in case you don’t have a smartphone since we were told you couldn’t buy tickets once there. 

And then we were in! A little underwhelming to say the least. But we still managed to get some pictures.

This first picture is supposed to represent the women of Saudi Arabia as the “pillars” of society through their various roles in Saudi society. Officially named “Al-Nourah Pillars” because the King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman referred to himself as the “brother of Nora” in the year 1774. The seven pillars are also supposed to symbolize seven women who have greatly helped to shape Saudi society. We will try to name them, but the sign was scraped off for some letters. The women were: Princess Sara bint Ahmad Al Sudairy, Princess Noura bint Abdulrahman, Moudhi bint Sultan bin Abu Wahtan, Fatimah bint Mohammed bin Abdulwanhab, Ghaliyya Al Bogammia, (this name was too scraped off to read at all), and Fatimal Al Abu Gahas. (Sorry if any of the names are incorrect, as we said many letters were scraped off. If you know what the names should be we will happily fix them to keep this as accurate as possible!) But, this was the entrance.

And then we saw what we were coming for! Oof! Amazing! Cross out “underwhelming” above!

As you get closer and closer you realize that you’ll be walking through all of those buildings. It’s a historic area that seems to have been maintained/restored. If we’re correct… UNESCO has strict guidelines as to what can and cannot be done to sites, so it must be mainly maintained. But you can walk all through it which is super cool. 

It’s actually amazing. And another tip (we’re filled with tips today for some reason), don’t get caught up with other groups of visitors. When we first entered we were surrounded by many Saudi visitors who were also checking the site out, but then we just waited about two minutes and they had all passed us and we were alone again to explore at our own pace. This happened a few times, but every time we just waited for a few minutes and it was well worth it. Again, very very few foreigners. We only saw one tour group at the end of the day that we can remember, and they were Spaniards here for the Spanish Super Cup!

Well, not only is this a historic site that you can walk around as “the largest open-air museum in the world,” but there are also museums within the city limits as well. The first of which is the Diriyah Museum. The museum is pretty impressive as it outlines the history and historic significance of Diriyah to the Saudi State. As always, we will try to accurately summarize the new information we learned today for you (some of the information was the same as yesterday at Al Masmak).

So, if you remember from yesterday’s history lesson… the first Saudi State ended when the Ottoman’s started feeling threatened by the Saudi State and ordered the taking of the capital, where we now find ourselves. The army, led by Ibrahim Pasha, arrived at Addiriyah (again we follow the spelling as we see it on the signs) on 8 March 1818. Imam Abdullah bin Saud (ruler of Saudi Arabia, which you can tell from the ‘Saud’ last name) had reinforced the city in preparation for attacks from invading armies, but it wasn’t enough. The army led by Ibrahim Pasha suffered some setbacks, but it wasn’t enough to defend and keep the city out of the hands of the Ottomans. After “six gruelling months of siege and heroic resistance” Imam Abdullah surrendered on 9 September 1818, bringing the First Saudi State to an end.

Now, the museum is not all doom and gloom, it has many articles from this time period, some of which you can see here, and it is also a symbol of the “start” of the modern Saudi Arabia that would come in the future.

But, as it is also a museum showing the establishment of the Saudi State, there is a genealogical tree of the royal family of Saudi Arabia. Here I am with that tree.

Now, you may look at that and say “nice tree” and that’s it. But! Hold on… zoom into that tree and every single leaf is a member of the royal family of Saudi Arabia. That tree just got a whole lot more impressive. There are SO many members of the royal family.

And then it was back outside to a quick visit to the mosque with a great view back towards Diriyah.

And then, we entered what was the most interesting part (for us), the market. We were just calmly walking around the cafe looking out over Diriyah below, the palm trees, the beauty, and then we saw someone leaving a building. Well, it’s an open-air museum, so we tried to enter. Nope. There was a young guy outside that stopped us from entering and spoke to us in Arabic. Well… by this point this had happened to my partner enough that he just says “la arabii, injilizii,” which we believe is our best phonetic translation of “not Arab, English,” hehe. It’s worked for us so far, and here as well. He tells us that the entrance is the next doorway down the street. In we go.

Outside of the market there were very young girls yelling things in Arabic, we just smiled and entered. We are guessing that they were inviting people into the market to sell things as it was designed to demonstrate a market during the First Saudi State (we assume). Inside we didn’t know about taking video or pictures, but then one of the women that were “selling” things spoke to us in English and told us exactly what she was selling and what they were used for and told us that we could and should take pictures and videos of everything. We didn’t need her to say any more! We were on it!

She was “selling” what for us has become a staple in the Middle East, dates! But there were a lot of things for sale! It was very interesting. If only we could speak Arabic, we could have gotten an even more thorough understanding/feel for the place as we would have understood what the sellers were selling and what others were saying/yelling. We also feel a little uncomfortable going up to everyone and demanding they speak to us in English just because we can’t understand their language, we should have learned more Arabic. (BUT! Everyone we did speak to here did speak perfect English).

Then it was back outside through the exit we had tried to enter through earlier. The young guy saw us and smiled and we did our typical “shukran,” hehe. Then it was back through the streets of the old city to the Imam Abdullah bin Saud Palace.

And then it was on to the Arabian Horse Museum. Now, you may know that this is one of the most sought after horse breeds in the world, and this museum is solely dedicated to these horses. Here you have different art, implements for riding, and books/registries detailing all of the Arabian horses owned by the royal family (we think at the time of the First Saudi State, but we may be wrong and it may be until now).

And then there is this interesting statue of Turfa. Turfa was an Arabian horse that was presented as a coronation gift to King George VI in 1937 by King of Saudi Arabia Abdulaziz Al Saud because of the hospitality received by Prince Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud while in England. The statue was then commissioned in 2019 by the King Abdulaziz Horse Centre at Dirab in memory of Turfa. Very interesting, and really drives home the point that these horses are prized worldwide.

Then, it was off for a quick stop at the Military Museum. Here there are various armaments and models of various implements of war.

Then we walked around the outside of the open-air museum to this beautiful view.

But, we had to try to hurry. After seeing everything my partner wanted to go around a second time to try to film as much as we could, but the sun was going down. We had a race on our hands! You can see that it is getting dark as we are arriving to the exit.

So we did our second lap of everything, very big, and maybe one day you’ll be able to see it as well over on our YouTube channel, but then we arrived at the exit again and it was SO dark, but the buildings were all lit up and you could still walk through everything.

And then! Just by chance, a light show started out of nowhere! We had no warning, but luckily for us, there was a problem so it stopped. It had started in Arabic, but then it was stopped and it started in English. We weren’t entirely sure why at the time, everyone around us was speaking Arabic, but then we saw a tour group of Spaniards with Spanish Super Cup badges on, so they probably did it for them. But it worked out well for us because we could understand what was going on. And the light show was beyond impressive. We also filmed all of the light show, and hopefully it turns out well. The light show was more a history lesson than anything else, explaining the importance of Ad-Diriyah in the development of the modern Saudi State. We’ve pretty much covered as much as we know in yesterday and today’s posts, so we will just leave you with these four pictures showing life in Ad-Diriyah, the battles that it took to build the Saudi State, the Saudi State, and then the modern Saudi State as it is today.

And then it was time to leave… My partner didn’t really feel like leaving yet, but it was already 7 pm, it was getting dark, and we didn’t know how we would get back to the hotel. So what did we do? We went into the welcoming centre to look around, hehe. There they had some models and things like that showing the history of the site, and they had Saudis showing traditional Saudi/Arab hospitality by giving out tea and dates to anyone who wanted some. We also stood in line to get my partner’s name written in Arabic calligraphy (he didn’t bother getting my name though…). The line was pretty long so we waited and waited, but when it was our turn it was the first time we spoke while in line. Obviously my partner’s name was not Arabic and everyone in the line was shocked. They immediately asked him where he was from, where his name was from and its meaning, and he was welcomed to Saudi Arabia and they wished him/us a great stay. So far, so good!

But now we really need to get going!

Well, that was our time in the historic area of At-Turaif! Highly, highly recommend you go visit it if you ever casually find yourself in Riyadh. And thank you very much to the Saudis we met at the Real Madrid game that told us to come here, without them we wouldn’t have heard about this great place.

Well, you have probably realized that my partner isn’t the best at just leaving places… so we walked around the not-so-historic part of Diriyah. We were also told about this, that the restaurants are great but you should book in advance. We didn’t try any of them though, we just enjoyed the scenes from the outside.

When we got to the outside we asked the security guard where the taxis were and he promptly told us that there weren’t any. Uh oh. We asked how we could get back to Riyadh, he told us the only option out there is Uber. Luckily we had downloaded Uber before the Real Madrid game, so we were able to order our Uber quickly and easily. The drive back? 20 minutes, and it was something like 30 SAR (~10 dollars), much much better than our morning drive!

Then we got dropped off at the mall by our hotel because that’s the only thing we know the address of, and the same events as yesterday are being held, this time we stand to watch a bit of the dancing and singing before getting our groceries, our supper, and going back to the hotel for a well deserved rest after a great day in Saudi Arabia! Good night from Riyadh!