Well… today will be short and we have to make a decision. Do we go to the game tonight or not? The other Spanish Super Cup semi final? Hard choice because we would love to see Barcelona play, but will we be lucky enough to get an Uber out there? Or find another taxi? Let’s at least look for the bus! Off we go! 

So today, that’s pretty much our plan. We will just go walk a bunch, look at a building because we have something to find there, and then look for the bus routes. Then decide on the game. Seems simple, right?

So we leave and decide to only walk in residential neighbourhoods if we can, that way we avoid being directly beside all of the cars and avoid the honking as much as possible. 

And you can see our goal in the distance. Something we were a bit shocked at as we landed in Riyadh was the lack of sky scrapers. Such a big city in a country that is so rich with oil, but they’ve decided to build outward rather than up. You can really see it in the above picture. We know that they have the financial district where they have lots of tall buildings, we’re just making a general observation. 

And then we’re very close. It looks like a “regular downtown” area around the Al Faisaliah Tower with a fashionista mall, a library, and lots of little shops in the general area. But we’re only interested in seeing the tower. 

And in going inside because we heard there was a model. We found it! You can also apparently go up to “the orb” but we didn’t do that. If we missed out, you can let us know. 

And that’s it! Now with that checked off we can walk towards where we think the bus routes are and see what we can find. First, we have to figure out how to cross the street. Didn’t we tell you that the cars are pretty crazy? One car even stopped to talk to us because we were both just laughing at the craziness, but, our Arabic is non existent. Haha. 

The neighbourhood is pretty nice! We enjoyed walking in it with its wide sidewalks. Perfect for us. The stores all seemed a little nicer in the sense that they seemed like fancy chocolate shops and cafes with a few places for nice clothes mixed in. 

So… we did find bus stops. But look. Not entirely helpful…. Do the busses sell paper tickets? Or do they sell the cards? Much different than the Emirates where we just came from. 

Well.. that’s pretty much it. We were on our way back towards the hotel, still looking for our bus route. But all we found were cars, cars, and more cars. 

And then we finally made it to where our bus route was. At least we found a sign. We stood there for what felt like a long time (especially after my partner walked so many kilometres) and there was no bus. So… do they run? All we got were a few pictures in front of the Saudi Post and of what is responsible for most of the construction around the city, the metro. 

It was already the time to get going towards the game, and we had just arrived to our hotel. We didn’t really feel confident about going, and we’re reaaaaaally tired… so we will just watch it from home. A little sad. But! We both fell asleep so quickly, so we obviously needed the rest! Goodnight from Riyadh!