We wake up in Madinah and see something we haven’t seen in a long, long time… clouds/fog! 

As we mentioned in our last post, we can’t stay any longer in Madinah because we can’t get a hotel room. But, we also can’t leave Madinah on a Friday before witnessing the Friday prayer. So, with that in mind, we ask for a late checkout and head out!

So strange to have this strange weather after a few days of perfectly sunny skies. But whatever, it’s not like it’s bad out, just different. In no time we are arriving close to the Prophet’s Mosque. You can already tell that it’s Friday. There are a lot of people. A lot, a lot. And how to deal with all of these people? By setting out water. 

We’re not sure if this is always here and we just haven’t noticed it, but we notice it today. And people are using it. Maybe it’s for the heat, or maybe it’s just to make sure everyone stays hydrated. We’re also reminded of a picture we posted from Al Madinah Museum yesterday where they were delivering water to worshippers in the Prophet’s Mosque, maybe this is the modern equivalent.

And then… wow. We thought we had seen a lot of people in and around the Prophet’s Mosque these past few days, but that was absolutely nothing compared to today. The main entrance that we have always taken pictures of is almost a full block away in these. 

No wonder the Prophet’s Mosque is being expanded. If this is a “regular” Friday… imagine during the yearly pilgrimage. Wow. But, we obviously don’t stay here, we want to see a bit more. We walk around the mosque, staying as close as possible while not bothering anyone. 

And then we get to the side of the Mosque and just sit and wait there. The number of people and prayer mats is really a lot. We’re not sure how to really stress just how many people are actually here. 

As we’re standing on the edge of the area surrounding the Prophet’s Mosque we end up right beside a little street. This little street is chaos. People are turning onto the street and just ditching their cars to go and get ready for the midday prayer. This causes a lot of problems and the Prophet’s Mosque police have their work cut out for them trying to maintain the traffic flowing. Eventually when the call to prayer actually begins everyone just stops and goes to pray together. We stayed for the entire prayer, but then had to quickly leave to be able to make it back to the hotel. You can still see how cars are just abandoned on the side of the road to be able to make the prayer in the Prophet’s Mosque.

And then we cross underneath the road. So many more people.

And then it’s time to walk up through all of the people. Cars essentially just have to wait until everyone leaves the area.

Eventually we turn onto our hotel’s street and we’re alone again. Our last picture of Uhud Mountain and of us walking around Madinah.

And with that, our time in Al Madinah Al Munawwarah is over, we get our things from the hotel and head back down to the street to get a taxi. We’re quickly in a car and on our way back to the train station. Just about when we’re about to arrive we spot this sign. 

This is what we told you about when we first arrived in Madinah, the sanctuary around Madinah. You can see that the train station is just outside of the Haram. We cross this boundary, get off, and we’re at the train station.

Just like in Jeddah, we arrive a few minute before the train we’d like to take without a ticket. At the hotel we had seen that there was a train car with about 10 seats left, so we’d take that one. If not, it wasn’t long until the one after that and there were a lot of seats left there. We go and ask for the seat we picked out on the website to be next to the window and facing forward. Guess what. There’s only one seat left. So we get lucky and buy that last remaining seat. We thought it may be a language barrier or something… so we check online. Nope, there aren’t any seats available at all now that we have our ticket. Wow. So we just wait around a little bit in the train station before it’s time to leave.

We climb up to the passenger waiting area and then immediately back down to the trains. We quickly find the train and get on, which means we can easily take pictures to show you the inside of the train again.

And then the time start ticking. As you can see, the train is pretty empty. Where is everyone? As the time keeps ticking by we really start to wonder because the train is definitely not filling up. A minute before we’re set to pull away my partner checked the website again, and all of the seats are still sold. Hmmm…. No one else arrives. You can really tell by the lack of luggage on the train.

But! This means that we can comfortably sit next to the window! Great!

Just like before, the ride was fast and pleasant. We both really enjoy just watching the countryside flash by the windows. In what feels like no time at all, we’re back in Jeddah. We get off at the airport and head inside.

Once inside, we of course stop at the aquarium again, how could we not?

And then it’s back to the bus to wait for our drive into Jeddah.

Unfortunately for us… a bus had juuuuust left, so we ended up having to wait quite a long time before the next one took off. We just sat around waiting for it as we didn’t know what else to do after looking at the aquarium for a long time. At least that let us enjoy the sunset as we went into Jeddah.

The sunset really hits differently when it’s over a huge construction site.

Finally, we get back to the Saptco bus station in Al Balad. Again, we get out, walk through the people asking us if we want to continue our journey, and get to the hotel.

As you can see from my selfie outside of the bus station… it’s late. Luckily we already know this neighbourhood, so we just quickly drop our things off at the hotel and immediately go out. See if you can recognize any of these buildings, hehe.

And then we head up a little bit more into the neighbourhood to see the Nassif House Museum. Except… what’s this? It’s open!

Look at the line of people going in! We will finally get to look inside, so exciting! (Can you tell we’re both excited?). First thing you see as you walk into the museum is this model of Al Balad/Jeddah. At least, we think that this is the future plan for what it will look like once it is fully restored/constructed as we see some small differences between today’s Jeddah and the model.

The decorations throughout the building are very nice. As with many buildings, these decorations are all geometric in nature. We love it.

And you can see rooms that have been preserved from when the house was regularly used. There is this room, which we’re not sure what it is/was.

But then there’s this one. If you recall our past explanations of this house, the house belonged to the Nassif family, but for three years King Abdulaziz would use this house whenever he was in Jeddah (until his own palace was built). Well, he had to work and receive diplomatic visitors while here, so he had an office and everything set up. 

And just look at the decorations. Even if this is just a “simulation,” the details are still there.

And, finally, two pictures to circle back to our architectural explanations we did way back when we initially visited Jeddah. You can see the lattice over the windows which help maintaining a cooler building while maintaining privacy and you can also see the wooden separation between the blocks of petrified coral that were used to build many of the buildings along the Red Sea coast. Super cool to see this from the inside.

And with that, we’re done the museum. 

We walk around the neighbourhood a bit more to make sure that my partner is good and tired and to see if we can get a few more pictures. All we see are some pretty doors before it’s time to go to get our food and head back to the hotel.

Well, we woke up in Madinah on a Friday and now are going to sleep in Jeddah. What a day. Goodnight from Jeddah!