After a few days to recover from the Ivory Coast trip in Istanbul, it was back to the airport to head to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to join another Explore group. It was snowing in Istanbul and I never expected that the plane would have to be de-iced before departure, but it was (temperature was about -1C). I think was nearly 3am before we left Istanbul, but the pilots made up time in the air, so we landed only about 45 minutes late into Riyadh, where it was sunny and much warmer! As part of their Vision 2030 project, Saudi Arabia opened to non-Muslim tourists in September 2019, only a few months before COVID hit. Their e-visa process wins the prize for the quickest issued. It took longer to resize the digital photo to an acceptable size
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