Jan 14 - We intended to just tour around and see things in Buraydah today, starting out at King Khalid Park. However, both the cultural center and Buraydah Museum are closed. I’m not sure why this is the case, as it is Saturday. At any rate the park itself is open, with a large playground and some friendly stray cats. The area of the park has a very different feel to it than where we are staying, more open with many date palms.
This is the first place in the city where we see people in the normal Saudi dress. Families are here for picnics, as Saturday is a semi-official ‘weekend’ day. Men and male children all in thawbs, women in niqabs. The standard base for sitting on the grass is a heavy carpet, like what you would use under the dining room table. Not only here, but I’ve seen this underlayment used on the side of the freeway, as though the family couldn’t be bothered to even look for an exit and decided just to eat lunch in the sand next to the rushing traffic.
Take the car back to the hotel and decide to leave it for the rest of the day. I am so close to turning it back in to the rental place and don’t want to drive around any more in a crush of traffic. We head out for a long walk through town to a more classy restaurant than is present in our district. It does turn out to be fancy, featuring individual booths with sliding wooden doors, and a waiter wearing a bowtie. On the way back, we go a shorter way, although this means dodging highway traffic. A typical hazard for people without cars in the KSA. We pass a series of empty lots where groups of people are playing cricket. Further evidence of the South Asian guest worker population in this part of the city.