Saudi Diaries — Part 2: First Night in Jeddah AND THE MORNING TO ADMIRE

The drive from King Abdulaziz International Airport into the city of Jeddah at seven in the evening is not a gentle introduction to Saudi traffic.
Abdulaziz drove the way Saudis drive, which is to say with a fluency and confidence in the language of the road that I, from the passenger seat, could only observe with wide eyes and a grip on the door handle. The highways were broad and fast — genuinely fast, not European-motorway fast, but a different category altogether — and they were absolutely not empty. Rush hour in Jeddah is a phenomenon unto itself. Headlights kept multiplying around us. Lanes changed with a decisive lack of ceremony. There was a certain smoothness to the highway dance at 100 kilometres an hour between drivers who all seemed to understand the rules of an exchange I had not been briefed on. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a classical European 'stick by the rules' guy either. My Croatian driving style is sometimes too much, even in the city I live in (Vienna, Austria), but I was deeply, profoundly grateful to be in the passenger seat. It would have been a much more stressful experience if I had to be behind that wheel.
But between the white-knuckle moments, I was looking.

Abdulaziz, to his great credit, did not drive straight to the hotel.
Instead, he took the long way. The generous way. The way that said: "You have come a long way to see this city, so I am going to show it to you." We looped through neighbourhoods I had no names for yet — wide residential streets lined with low white and sand colored villas behind high walls, the occasional mosque rising above the roofline with its minaret catching the shine of the street lights. Then came the commercial streets, busier, louder, the pavements alive with people in a way that felt distinctly different from a European city at this hour — families out together, groups of young men, women in abayas moving between shops, everyone seemingly in agreement that the evening, not the afternoon, was when the city truly belonged to its inhabitants.
The heat was still present, softer now than it had been at the airplane door but still warm enough to feel through the car window, a gentle pressure against the glass.
Then Abdulaziz turned, and suddenly there was the sea.
The Jeddah Corniche in the evening is one of those places that does something unexpected to you. It is a long, sweeping boulevard that runs for kilometres along the edge of the Red Sea, broad and palm-lined, built on a scale that makes you feel pleasantly small. The water to the right was darkening from dark blue to a deep black, and the palms that lined the promenade swayed in the sea breeze with a slow, unhurried ease, as though they had been doing this for centuries and intended to continue regardless of anything happening around them. To the left, the city's glass towers caught and reflected the street lights' light. Ahead, the road stretched on in a long, confident curve.
I rolled the window down. The air that came in was warm and salted and absolutely, perfectly alive.
There, said Abdulaziz, and pointed.
I saw it before I understood what I was looking at: a white column of water rising from the sea itself, impossibly tall, lit from below so that it glowed against the darkening sky like something from a myth. The King Fahd Fountain — the tallest fountain in the world, shooting water over three hundred metres into the air above the Red Sea — stood in the distance and demanded to be stared at. I stared at it. It was the kind of thing that makes the word impressive feel slightly inadequate.
Can we go closer? I asked.
Of course, said Abdulaziz. Let's go
What followed was a tour of approximately half of Jeddah's road network in pursuit of a fountain that remained, at all times, clearly visible on the horizon and completely unreachable by car. We took a promising turn and ended up in a residential area of absolute tranquillity. We doubled back, found the Corniche again, and tried another approach that deposited us, somehow, further away than we had started. The fountain continued to glow serenely in the distance, utterly unbothered. At some point, we agreed that we would definitely find it — just not right this moment; perhaps after dinner, we would look at the map properly.
We never looked at the map. We went to the hotel. We eventually figured out that the city was preparing for the Formula 1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, which was scheduled for the following week. The roads had already been rerouted, and the city began managing traffic for the big event.
And here is the thing: I have been back to Jeddah several times since that first trip. Each time, Abdulaziz and I have looked at the fountain from the Corniche, from the plane descending over the city on approach, from rooftop restaurants and hotel windows, and from moving cars. It is always there. It is always magnificent. We have never once actually reached it.
At this point, I have stopped trying to decide whether this is a failure of navigation or a feature of our friendship. It is simply what we do. We admire the King Fahd Fountain from a respectful distance, agree to get there next time, and move on with our lives. It is, in its own way, a tradition.
The Hilton Jeddah materialized out of the city like a promise kept — the fountain still glowing somewhere behind us, in the middle of the sea, absolutely fine without us.

Whatever I had expected from a hotel dinner on my first evening in Saudi Arabia, what arrived at our table in the hotel restaurant was not it, and I mean this in the best possible sense.
The buffet menu was generous in the way that a good host is generous: it offered familiar territory for the cautious traveller, a few concessions toward the international visitor who might not yet be ready to fully commit to the unknown. But surrounding those careful, diplomatic options was a spread of Arabic cuisine that made it very easy to be brave. There were mezze dishes — hummus with a depth and smoothness I had not encountered before, delicious salads I could not get enough of. There was grilled meat seasoned in ways I couldn't identify, but I immediately wanted more. There was rice, fragrant with spice, the kind of rice that makes you understand why entire culinary traditions have been built around a single grain. And my absolute favourite - Makdous - preserved tiny Eggplants in olive oil, stuffed with peppers, garlic, walnuts, ...
I ate more than I should have, given the excitement of the day. I ate without apology.
Abdulaziz watched all of this with quiet amusement, the satisfaction of a man who has brought someone he likes to a place he loves and is watching the pieces click into place. This is nothing, he said at some point, gesturing at the table. Wait until you see what comes next.
I believed him, but I could not quite imagine what more might look like. I filed it away and took another piece of that amazing eggplant dish and bread.

I slept deeply and without dreams, in the specific way that only travel exhaustion and a very good meal can produce together.
And then the morning came.
I don't remember setting an alarm. I think the light did it — the particular quality of Red Sea morning light, which does not creep in apologetically the way northern light does but arrives with intention, filling the room with a warm, directional gold that says: there is something out there worth waking up for.

Yesterday night I made a rooky mistake - i didn't close the curtains completley.
I got out of bed, pulled the curtains to the side and stood there for a long moment without moving.
The Corniche stretched out before me in both directions as far as I could see — the same boulevard I had seen from the car the night before, but transformed entirely by daylight. The Red Sea beyond it was catching the early light in a way that made it look less like water and more like hammered silver. ​

The palm trees moved in a light breeze, their fronds tilting and recovering with that same slow, unhurried rhythm I had noticed the evening before, as though the city had its own breathing. Below, the waterfront was empty — the joggers, families, men and women who filled this boulevard yesterday were all staying out of the sun. The distant sound of traffic did not stay indoors. The cars and trucks were just beginning their daily conversation. Above it all, the sky was the particular shade of blue that only exists in warm countries: deep and clear and completely without cloud.
And there, in the far distance, just visible above the silver line of the sea, the fountain. Already up. Already glowing faintly even in the morning light, sending its column of water three hundred metres into the air for an audience that, as far as I could tell, included nobody who had ever actually stood next to it.
I laughed to myself and went to check if Abdulaziz was awake and to find coffee.​

Breakfast, when I finally made my way downstairs, was the kind of breakfast that reframes your understanding of what the word means.
In Vienna, my breakfast is bread, cold cuts, and maybe an egg if I'm feeling ambitious. What was laid out in the Hilton restaurant was a different philosophy entirely — an argument, made in food, that the morning meal deserves to be taken seriously. The structure was the same: pastries and fruits, eggs and cold cuts for the westerners. And then the part I was there for: Foul -  beans cooked low and slow with spice, warm bread in varieties I couldn't name but worked my way through systematically. Shakshouka - poached eggs in rich tomato red pepper sauce, hummus, baba ganoush, labneh - strained yogurt, fresh veggies and so many more dishes. There was fresh juice, there was strong coffee, there was the particular satisfaction of a meal that asks nothing of you except that you sit down and pay attention.
I ate slowly, looking out at the Corniche through the restaurant windows, the palms still moving in that easy morning breeze.
And even then, even in that moment of uncomplicated contentment, Abdulaziz's words from the night before were sitting in the back of my mind. This is nothing. Wait until you see what comes next.
He was right, of course. He was completely right. But I didn't know that yet. All I knew was that I was sitting in a hotel in Jeddah, full of food I hadn't expected, looking at a sea I had never seen before, and something inside me had already quietly, irrevocably shifted.
I was no longer a visitor, bracing myself. I was someone who wanted more.