Arabian Nights (Part II)

Quest

Somebody has to tell you that "Al-Salam Holiday Inn" is a five star hotel, otherwise nobody will believe it. It is not a bad hotel, but compared to five star hotels I have seen in India, I was bit disappointed. Actually, somebody said that it was the only five star hotel :-). (I had not dared to think about how ordinary hotel here would be) But, One good thing was, breakfast was included in the deal, and it has variety of Vegetarian food options (more than its lunch and dinner menu has. Actually, I found only three veg. menus in lunch/dinner : Veg. Fried rice, Veg. Soup, and Pizza Margareta.) In afternoon, we have to take lunch in office canteen where for veggie you will get only rice and sambar. So in night, now it was necessary to search for food (veg) outside. Thus, our quest for food started from Sunday.

Jeddah is very big city, divided in number of districts (sounds strange, but it is the reality). like Al-Thaghar, Al-Kandarah(where our office is located), Al-Balad etc. Pawar (who met me on Jeddah Airport) was living in some hotel in Al-Balad, so we started our search from Al-Balad itself. Al-Balad is basically part of old Jeddah. You can find more than 100 years old buildings there. It is also part where you will find local market which they call Sukh. We roamed around main street of Al-Balad but didn't find any restaurant. Also, we couldn't reach Pawar as he was not in his hotel. After unsuccessful search we returned to hotel and had Pizza.

Next day, we enquired with our colleagues in office (also from India, but was staying here from around 1 month) regarding indian restaurants. They had told that, there are two areas: one is Al-Sharfiyaa, (near to our hotel) where we can find "Chennai Darbar" south indian restaurant. And other area was Azizia, somewhat far but lot of indian and pakistani commuinty are staying there, so we can find good indian restaurants. On Monday we didn't want to go too far, so, that day we went to Al-Sharfiyaa. You can call call Al-Sharifiyaa as very much part of Old Jeddah.