May 4th. Medina

An 8 am start for a long excursion to  Medina. Again we had to take the shuttle to the terminal , where we boarded a bus to the station: the station turned out to be a fantastic piece of architecture. It was quite odd as there were a large number of train tracks, masses of escalators, a surfeit of chandeliers, but hardly any people. The Saudis have clearly left room for expanding the number of train services.

We waited quite a long time before boarding a  high speed train at 10.30. We were in business class, and Chris moved to sit opposite an Australian couple from Brisbane, Colleen & Ian, and enjoyed talking to them. We were served a substantial snack, of which we took just the non calorific bits. When they say a high speed train, they mean a high speed train - we rattles along at 300 km/hr for most of the journey

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Once in Medina, and here the station was the same OTT design, we drove 30 minutes for lunch - it being the way of nearly all tour companies to feed you rather than show you what sights you had come to see. There was a kerfuffle just before we got to the lunch venue, the 2 coaches were unable to get under a bridge. You would have thought that this would have been checked in advance - but luckily our destination was only a few hundred yards the other side of the recalcitrant bridge. , So we walked  the short distance. The venue was really luxurious and the food was good. The surrounding rooms in he villa were  splendidly furnished and there was a very scenic pool outside.

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We then drove to the 2nd holiest mosque in Saudi. We were not allowed inside the gigantic mosque area and our Saudi guide, Wali, had a stand up, full on, row with the armed guards as one of our group had put their foot over the dividing line. Wali was intent on having the last word and completely forgot that he had a group to guide. David pulled him away once but he returned after only a few yards. In the end Marcel removed him.

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We then went to an exhibition hall which showed the various stages of the mosque´s constructions: here again there were problems with Wali. For the next 3 to 4 hours we stopped at the outside of various mosques, a date shop and a shopping mall, almost an hour here!!. We seemed to be in the minority in wanting to see Medina, and not the inside of a shopping mall that was identical to thousands of other shopping malls around the world

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The battle site of Mohammed´s defeat of the pagans from Mecca some 1440 years ago was a bit lost on us. As I understood it, Muslim archers on the little hill were the deciding factor in the battle Our final stop at Cuba mosque was very pleasing.