Our last full day in Jeddah. Well… we spent longer than we should have in the hotel today, so we had a late start. But! It was necessary to plan where to go next, how, and when. And plus, we didn’t have any plans so it will be a slow day, perfect. We’ll start as we have started every morning here in Jeddah, by looking over “our” neighbourhood. 

All we will do today is stroll through Al Balad and read a bit along the Jeddah Lake. So, join us! We will try to show you new things that we hadn’t seen ourselves already, but no promises that some beautiful things won’t appear a second time. First, we can start with some art. 

We hadn’t see this before, and it’s so close to our hotel. Just goes to show how the streets and alleyways are winding and go off in every direction. And then we will once again show you the construction. How interesting it’ll be to return and see Al Balad once it’s all done. 

Well, that’s pretty much it for the day! Short and sweet. We went to see the iconic mosque once again. 

While there we noticed something a little funny. Not sure if you will be able to appreciate it or not really… but! if you look at the edge of the path around the lake there is a sign that has some water related rules. In order it says: keep away from shoreline, no swimming, and no fishing. Up to now, that’s fine. Makes sense. But… do people not listen? On the righthand side of the picture you can see someone sitting by a bench. Who is that person? A lifeguard. They even have a flotation device. Do people regularly fall in? Do people not listen? Is the water dangerous? Who knows. But we found it a little funny. 

Then we just sat and read for a bit. What a place to just hang out and read. Or do anything, really. Everything is just so peaceful and calm. It’s a great spot. 

We waited here long enough for the sun to start going down, and then decided to get moving away just in time to catch the sun setting over the Jeddah Lake. 

You can see (well, you probably can’t but it’s there) the Jeddah Lighthouse in the background.

We then walked around the “lake” for the last time and got a marginally better picture of the Jeddah Lighthouse. 

Then we just needed to tire out my partner with a few more walks before going back to the hotel. Of course we walked through historic Jeddah, what else did you think we would do? 

And… just above this sign we saw something that we hadn’t previously noticed. It seems like Al Balad is just a place filled with hidden gems!

From the street we saw these up high above in a walkway between two buildings. How do we get there…? My partner went into a small mall that we hadn’t entered since our first day here and started going up, looking to see where this walkway could be. When we finally found it, no one was around. Maybe this walkway is only used during the day? It didn’t seem like the other building was open at all. 

And now we can start going back to our hotel. We pass by a little square between shopping centres that we’ve passed through a bunch of times already just to show you this. These are always here for people to do their daily prayers, and they’re already pointed towards Makkah. On Friday we saw that this was filled with a lot of people. This is something we haven’t really seen in the other countries of the Middle East that we have visited so far, even if they have all been Muslim countries. 

Then we walk up the path that we have walked so many times, with little shops on either side. 

And then take one final look at the historic centre of Al Balad. 

With that we can stop for our last Jeddah shawarma at the below restaurant and be on our way to the hotel. Tomorrow will be a travel day, but we hope it’s not too long. Good night from Jeddah!