And For Another Saudi Arabian City, Jeddah...

We (HT, his wife Cecilia, and I) took a trip to Saudi's former capital, Jeddah, to visit one of HT's friends (Here's a picture of HT in Jeddah)...

We visited Leo Del Mundo, his wife, Helen (the two standing in the picture below...) who were wonderful hosts.

They have a 5 year old son, Elliot, too...

And here I am at Leo's house.

They took us along the Corniche, which is the main drag along the sea shore.

The water there is impossibly clear to me, especially right in the city...

Hope this guy gets his limit...

I think Jeddah is much more of a "real" city than Riyadh, and it's a pretty cool place by local standards. But all women still have to wear an abaya (a black cloak) in public. Then again, Cecilia was only visiting...

A Little Night Pix

We went back to the Corniche at night and took a few shots.

Leo said that if one of the royalty is in town they turn on a big fountain at night. Guess we were lucky that a prince or King Fah'd was there, because it's a pretty impressive fountain.

Drive to the Red Sea

Jeddah is on the Red Sea, but there's a nice desolate public beach about 100 km outside of Jeddah that's supposed to be a nice place to hang out and snorkel by the reef. So, we took a drive to the beach.

On the way, we saw some camels and took some pictures.

We finally got there...

Didn't take any pictures underwater, but the reef is about 15 feet high (it causes that wave break visible in the coast picture above). I saw about as many fish in the Red Sea snorkeling as I saw at Key Largo diving. I'll have go back and re-learn how to dive...

And while we were there one of the cars we took got stuck in the sand. So, we went back to the main road, found a rope in a junkyard, and towed it out. That was the only snag in an otherwise perfect day -- probably the best time to be had legally in the Kingdom...

Outta Town

And one last picture we took on the way outta town. It reminded us of our home in the US, Chicago, since it looks like the Sears Tower emerging out of the Water Tower. What do you think?

On the way, I lost my wallet, but got it back after about a 300 km detour. Drove home at about 90 MPH, which was fun -- Saudi is the only place I pass the cops... It was a great trip!

Tom Loos