To “Cartown”

After a week behind a desk some activity was required and consequentially I’ve been for a 16km walk heading north away from the villa.  To my surprise the area was reasonably quiet, although I will admit to walking the suburban streets rather than the main roads.  The reasons for this were to minimize the amount of vehicle traffic I’d need to share the road with (remember it’s too hazardous to walk on the footpaths) and to have time to look are the houses. 

The following screen dump shows my start point (read arrow and the bottom) and my destination (top red arrow).  The icons on the map suggested there would probably be a large mall at my planned destination.  Highway 522 is also a major arterial route through Riyadh.

The housing in the early part of the walk was almost exclusively apartments but as I walked further north the suburban became more affluent.  To my surprise I stumbled upon a small suburban park and children’s play area being used by several families.  I guess it is rather hard for children to play in an apartment block so it was good to see a well maintained park that was being used by the local families.

I didn’t go too close to the park because I didn’t want to alarm the families (single predatory foreign male!).  Just as I reached Highway 522 I came upon a Chevolet dealership and showroom with numerous Saudi’s milling about.  There were a large number of new Chevrolet 4x4’s parked in front which surprised me as apparently it is difficult to purchase a SUV in the Kingdom.  One prerequisite is you must have a family with a prescribed minimum number of children.  But then it is possible to circumvent many of the rules if you have influence.

On rounding the corner I realised there was more than one mall.  Actually there were three in a row on the opposite side of the highway.

A ‘Centrepoint’.  I hadn’t realised it was a chain!

‘HyperPanda’  A large version of the usual ‘Panda’ store

The HyperPanda was linked to the adjacent Khurais Mall by and overhead pedestrian walkway.

The only problem was the malls were on the other side of a busy 12 lane highway with no pedestrian overpass and two walled median strips.  I had just worked out how to cross (there is a solution to every problem) when the minarets started wailing.  Got my timing wrong again….. Prayer time! I could see all the steel roller shutters going down and people scurrying off to the nearest mosque.  I turned right and started heading south.  This time passing all the second hand car dealers and the bad muslims not going to prayers.

Car dealers on the right… Mosque out of sight to the left.

On the way back I took a photo of a rather large local home.

Five roller door garages, so there must be at least three children!   Notice how there are very few windows facing the street and the few that do have shutters on them.  There’s also a large wall around the perimeter.  I though the wall had a rock feature on top but as I got closer I could see it was timber.  I assume they have a wood oven somewhere on the property.  I doubt it would be used for heating as fuel oil is very cheap.

Back at the villa I tried my lemon meringue pie. The pastry was OK and the lemon part in the middle was actually quite tangy.  However the meringue on top had ‘gone to hell’  It was as thin as the rubber bed sheet on a baby’s cot and had the same consistency.  I tried biting a chunk off which didn’t work.  Then I attempted to rip it with my teeth whilst dragging the remainder away from my mouth using a fork.  It just stretched… and stretched.. before snapping back wrapping itself around my nose!  After wrestling with it for a few more minutes I finally managed to force it into my mouth with the fork and swallow it whole!  More cooking practice is obviously required!