Dinner at the King's Palace

And I’m not talking about a Chinese food buffet. Or dining with Elvis. This time I'm referring to the palace of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

For the second part of Monday, I went into travel pool in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We are staying at the Marriott in Riyadh and being at the hotel for just a few minutes showed me a lot. We were told that we didn’t have to cover our heads unless we went out to the market or random streets. But if we stayed on the hotel property and were with the US press delegation, we should be fine. Even so, let’s just say this country is not exactly equal in treatment of the genders and I could immediately sense a slight bit of insecurity in being a blonde here.

We loaded up in the vans and went through Saudi “security”. It’s a little intimidating because they all have machine guns hanging around their necks but the security itself does not make you feel secure. Our van driver nearly killed us as we wove through traffic and I can’t tell you how many almost-accidents almost occurred. I just had to close my eyes and not watch.

We got to the airport, in the royal terminal of the airport, and were ushered into a holding room for a couple of hours. At some point, I needed to go to the bathroom so I asked for an embassy escort. The Saudi folks (with guns) had no idea where the women’s bathroom was because they had had very few women in this part of the airport before. But finally I found a woman’s bathroom that obviously had not been used by many. Two of the stalls just had holes in the floor and the other stall did have a toilet but no sign of toilet paper. So I’m walking out of the stall and all of sudden a man with a machine gun (do you see a trend?) walks in and looks at me like I’ve invaded his space (his weapon wasn’t drawn but it was startling nonetheless!) He really doesn’t care that he’s just walked into the women’s bathroom! So I hightailed it out of there being thankful that I don’t experience that too often!

We went outside and waited for Air Force One to arrive and boy was it cold!! They say it hasn’t been this cold in thirty years or so and they had snow in their forecast for the first time that anyone could remember. I, of course, didn’t bring a coat on this trip. I was thinking that I was coming to the Middle East, the desert, etc. and it had to be warm here. Wrong! I packed one sweater and I’ve worn it every single day. It would be an understatement to say it was frigid out there on the tarmac! The President’s handlers decided it was too cold for the ceremony to take place outside so the President and King Abdullah quickly made their way inside to a very large room packed with Saudi men and incense. I was one of about ten women (all American in the press corps or with the WH) in the room. They did a formal receiving line and drank some tea or coffee and then headed for the limos.

This motorcade was the longest motorcade that I had ever seen… well over 100 cars. We were so far behind the President’s limo that we couldn’t even spot him and all we saw for miles ahead of us were taillights! At one point we picked up some Crown Prince’s motorcade and got even further back.

We headed to the King’s guest palace where there was an arrival ceremony that involved a ton of horses. We spent several hours waiting for the President as he had a little bit of down time. We sat in a lounge in one wing of one building of the Guest Palace and it was pretty nice. I guess I was expecting even more lavishness but we really didn’t see much of that building. There were a lot of rooms and a lot of chandeliers and fancy furniture. But it was kind of 70s looking and a tad tacky, if you ask me. When I have my palace, I’m not going to be quite so gaudy! J We were served dinner at the palace which was in one of the dining rooms. Unfortunately since I had been sick a couple of days ago, I was scared to eat a ton and I skipped dessert. But what I did have was really good!

After being at the guest palace, we moved to a different building and different room of the King’s Palace. We waited in a room that about 300 Saudi men had come out and we relaxed in there. Now there was a lot of marble and a ton of chandeliers but this room didn’t really scream ‘palace’ to me. We went to another building and that was where the President and King were and that was pretty lavish. Words don’t really describe how lavish but let’s just say that if I picked something up and broke it, our national debt would be even more astronomical. The King and the President came out to say hello and drink some coffee. The King gave Bush a huge necklace, named him some huge honor, and then they went off to have a private meeting. We went to sit in the vans for a couple of hours. Not one of the more glamorous points of the day. But there were other moments that had made up for it!

One more country to go! We head to Sharm el Sheikh tomorrow for the day and then we finally head home!!