Visiting Old Jeddah

Our wonderful associate from SEU, Nourat, (I may be spelling her name wrong, here - sorry!) took us to Old Jeddah this evening. It is the area that existed in ancient times, a small city enclosed by a protective wall with 4 gates. The city is known as the gateway to Mecca, so there is a great deal of history here. Over several hundreds of years, literally millions of faithful have come through these gates on their way to Mecca. It is an absolutely beautiful city with beautiful people. I took a few photos from our excursion and have shared them below.

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If you look down a little lower in the post, I share pictures and write about our visit to a small, lovely museum that we visited, as well.

Jeddah Bliss Museum

We had the opportunity to tour the Jeddah Bliss Museum, which was founded and run by two businessmen who have a passion for the history of Jeddah. It was quite a lovely experience. I'll describe bits of the museum and the experience below.

The front door of the museum.

These two gentlemen are those who founded and run the museum. They've spent the last 35 years gathering artifacts from many different countries and are now sharing some of their artifacts in the museum.  The sitting room pictured above along with all its furnishings is patterned after traditional sitting rooms from nearly a century ago. These rooms were a sort of family room, for eating dinner, and for visiting with guests.

These men were very passionate about their work, the museum, and the preservation of history. They have plans to continue to preserve history through their efforts and are partnering with others in their work. It was great listening to them.

 

The goals of the museum. Very cool to see this kind of passion and clarity of purpose.

Below are photos of some of the beautiful artifacts.

Beautiful window covers. I absolutely love these - incredible color and elegant style.

DiAnna Palmer and myself. We will both work with the SEU faculty for the next four days as they continue to work through their needs as instructors at SEU. I am quite excited to meet the faculty and get to know them and their needs and see how I can contribute.

A beautiful door.

This is a jewelry chest.

Incredible tea pots.

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Again, it was a beautiful experience and I feel so blessed to be here and to work with such a great university and its people.