What to do, what to do? Well, we’re not sure. It’s our second last day in Riyadh, so we have to make it count. It’s a bit of a lie that “we’re not sure”. We know what to do, but you’ll see the problem in a second. 

So we head off from the hotel through the residential streets as always. 

Where else? The National Museum. It should be open from what we were told last time we tried to enter. 

We’re excited! There’s no more construction and there’s a bunch of people outside. Maybe they’re here for some “grand opening” or something. We calmly walk into the front doors… nope. Immediately a security guard comes and says it’s closed. Then another employee comes and speaks to us in English. We ask if it’s open, it isn’t. We tell them we were here a few days ago and they said that today was the day that it would be open… 

The museum’s staff, “no, today is the opening of the other exhibit that we were working on” (referring to the construction we had seen)

Us, “oh, what’s that?”

Staff, “about gold and jewelry.”

Us, “oh okay! Can we go see that then?”

Staff, “no, today is only for VIPs.”

Us, “oh, okay, we really wanted to see the museum.”

Staff, “the museum has been closed for months because of a fire. It will only open on Wednesday.” (Today is Monday).

Us, “oh… we won’t get to see it then, we leave on Wednesday morning, we were told it would open today and we were excited.”

Staff, “please! Extend your stay! We would love to welcome you in our museum.”

Us, “no, we can’t, we’ve already extended enough in Riyadh and we have to get moving.”

Staff, “please, we would love for you to see our museum.”

But… alas… we can’t. We told him that we would try to come back some other time, but for this visit there isn’t any hope. This is all fine for us, we understand, but why couldn’t we see that the museum had been closed for months online? We wouldn’t have come four times. Maybe it exists on the Arabic sites? Cause we didn’t see it on the English sites. 

Well….. now what? We’ve already continued South to Al Masmak and the market, we can’t go to Salaam Park… We’ve gone south, we’ve gone north, so we can go east or west. Let’s go east? We get to walking. Immediately we’re greeted by a regular sight of an open construction (?) site. 

And while walking we had to walk on major roads, and here is an interesting street sign. The sign has directions, the name of roads, etcetera as one would expect, but then it has two symbols which may be new to you unless you are from Saudi Arabia (or maybe the wider Muslim world). 

At the top of the sign, next to the symbol for the airport are two symbols. In the middle is the symbol for Mecca/Makkah which is the holiest city in Islam and the symbol on the right is for Madinah (we believe) which is the second holiest city in Islam. These symbols are on pretty much all road signs, so that you always know which way to go. This is likely very important for the millions of pilgrims that come to Saudi Arabia every year for their pilgrimages. We will get into that a bit later in the trip once we’ve left Riyadh. 

And, just to prove to you that it’s not only us that are disturbed by the honking on the main roads… here’s a sign outside of a mosque that’s on one of the main roads. It’s not just us, haha. 

Well, now we continue walking through residential neighbourhoods, sometimes having to cross very busy streets. There’s not much to show here as it’s just houses and apartment blocks, but some intersections have some statues and other decorations. 

We obviously had to take the second picture. This whole trip is still tied to the World Cup after all! And then we got our classic photo opportunity to say that we were actually in Riyadh, in case anyone didn’t believe us. 

But then we finally we make it to the goal of all of this walking (about 90 minutes after leaving the National Museum). 

Well, in we go. First thing you’re greeted with is a wall of animal related art. Not bad. 

So… we are not zoo experts by any stretch of the imagination… but reading reviews online and being here we can’t not mention that some of the enclosures seem small. And, we won’t show a picture, the elephants are not having a good time. In the elephant enclosure you have two elephants that are forced to face the visitors so that they can take pictures of them. If they start to leave the fence that faces towards the visitors the “zookeeper” walks towards them and they immediately turn back towards the visitors. Very uncomfortable for us to see. 

Walking around the rest of the zoo there are A LOT of animals from all corners of the world. Some animals we’re used to seeing in our “day to day” lives. 

But there are also A LOT of VERY exotic animals. 

The only one that needs introduction is the first picture, the rock hyrax, an animal native to the Middle East and parts of Africa. 

And another thing we found interesting… 

We’re used to seeing this sort of thing with animals that we typically think of as “domesticated,” like farm animals. But here you could feed a variety of animals from farm animals, to kangaroos, to monkeys, to the white tiger, to the giraffe. Incredible. 

We didn’t feed any of them, but it must be interesting. The only down side? We saw that the monkeys had little holes in their cages to receive the food they were given by zoo visitors… and some visitors had decided that it was a good idea to given them plastic bags and water bottles even with signs telling you not to… not ideal. 

But, with that it was time to go. 

One last look as we’re exiting the zoo and we’re done for the day. 

Now… what to do, what to do? You can see that there’s still some light out, and by now you must know that we pretty much always stay out until dark, so we need to find something to do. We had walked by a park earlier, so we should probably go check that out? 

Welcome to the King Abdullah Park! We had a nice walk through the park (which is a good sized park as it used to be an equestrian park), with some nice photo opportunities. 

But the real treat came once it started to get a little dark. The centre of the park is a very big water fountain, and it is timed with music. Well worth the wait. 

Well… if you’re there when they start. We watched this show and then sat to wait for the next one, and waited, and waited, then found out that it was every 90 minutes. We had thought it was every 30. With it already being late and my partner already being tired, we decided to start our long walk back to the hotel for some much needed food and rest. Good night from Riyadh!