Ramadan Kareem!

This site contains affiliate links from which we may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support!

It’s that time of year again, Ramadan, the holy month of fasting. Living in Saudi it means that no-one may eat or drink in public whether you are Muslim or not. But when the sun sets…… we have “iftar”, which is basically the meal that breaks the fast.

Now every year DH’s work puts on an “Iftar dinner” for all the employees, usually at some five star hotel. Last year we missed out because we forgot to book – this year I told hubby we really should go and enjoy a free dinner 🙂 So he put our names down on the list and we got our tickets…

It was held last night at the Faisalia, one of the two famous towers in the city. We got there well before sunset to make sure we got a table.

We’d never been to the hotel before, but there were signs for our “exclusive Iftar” – sounds impressive, doesn’t it?!

When we got inside we found that we were not as early as we thought and there were a few hundred people there already! They were dishing up and waiting at their tables for the sun to go down and the call to prayer indicating they could break their fast.

We found ourselves in a big hall, set up like a fancy food court. The food was all laid out buffet style, and also lots of cooking was happening on the spot. There was Chinese food, Arabic of course, Italian, Japanese, and all sorts! It was pretty amazing!

This ice sculpture was in the middle of the room with the Japanese food….. slowly dripping (it was, after all, 40C outside!).

Needless to say we ate too much… but enjoyed it 🙂 Good thing it is only once a year! They had a raffle, but we didn’t win anything sadly… and the kids missed out on something extra – when we were here years ago they used to get $25 gift vouchers for Toys R Us…  I guess they don’t look like “kids” anymore 🙂

Photo for Grandma and Oma 🙂

The boys “dressed up” in their smart batik shirts a friend brought back from Sri Lanka (Daniel still wanted to wear a cap though!). Elizabeth and I were going to wear our best clothes too, but then we remembered where we lived and that we’d be wearing  our abaya’s (black covering) so it didn’t matter what we wore underneath!

It was a special evening that I am sure we will remember for a long time… it’s not everyday that you get to go to a banquet!