Children's Paradise

Last night, both children were invited and attended birthday parties. Both started and ended at about the same time and were rather close in proximity... So we spent our Thursday night driving around town, dropping kids at parties, having dinner at Café Blanc, a traditional Lebanese restaurant with a modern twist and picking up exhausted kids from parties. But, boy, was it worth it!


Emma has been invited to a Wave Pool party that could compete with any wave pool at an expensive water park! The location was in the Diplomatic Quarters, tucked away from the street and protected from eyes and noises by high walls. Her classmate’s parents had reserved the entire facility and expected between 200 and 300 children. Emma loved the full-size slides, the enormous waves and had the time of her life. When I dropped her, I met both parents who were very nice and welcoming. In typical Arabian hospitality, the mother invited me to stay, have coffee and eat a few sweets…so, in order not to be rude, I accepted and sat down, ate my sweet, a delicious chocolate covered with Almonds and nuts and drank a small Arabic coffee, but explained that I couldn’t stay as my son also had a birthday invitation and we still had to drop him. After inquiring about ending time, I left Emma in all the surrounding nannies’ hands and only came back five hours later to pick her up, exhausted, fed, happy and bearing more gifts than she came with! Those party favors would rival any “regular” birthday gift you could offer a “regular” child back in the States or in Europe! We’ve already decided to try and visit that wave pool again, as a family…

Alex had been invited to another Swimming party at a Palace…We had the map, with the location in red and it looked like it took an entire city block.. and boy, did we find it easily! It was THE biggest palace we’d seen before in a residential neighborhood. After showing the invitation to the gate guard (since they never expect Westerners to attend those Saudi royal kids’ party) Alex, his friend Toby and I were let in. Not sure where to go, we were about to knock on the front door…but a nanny came out of a “smaller “residence and gestured us to follow her, in a marbled floors, highly decorated maze of hallways all the way back to the children’s residence! Yes, you are reading this correctly, the children have their own house, decorated and equipped with children in mind: colorful, kids sizes furniture, TVs all over, 2 elevators, one disco, a play theater, indoor video games, indoor riding cars, popcorn and soft ice-cream machines…

But that was nothing compared to the outside playground… Alex calls it the “Fun Land” and it really truly was just that. A foot deep pool with a interactive water playground, bumper cars, carousel, Disneyworld “make you throw up” teacups, a train, 2 inflatable jumpies, one plastic ball pit, and a pool over 6 meter deep made for diving and swimming with two slides worthy of any water park. By the way, did I tell you that all this was there permanently…? The kids have their own play land and use it whenever they want!

I had the chance to talk with the birthday girl mother for a few minutes. She was super nice, wearing a beautiful bright yellow silk/satin gown, made up and coiffed to go out. Following protocol, I shook her hand only after she extended it; we chit-chatted a bit and talked about how much fun the children were having, how much they were enjoying the play areas and the disco. She was happy to hear this and said that this was for her children and their friends to enjoy and that my children were welcome back any time. It was just two moms talking about their kids… Just the two of us, the Belgian-American mother of two with Her Royal Highness, daughter of King Abdullah and granddaughter of King Abdul-Aziz, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia.

After all that fun, it was time to leave. Kids gathered their stuff and we were led back through the maze of hallways, stopping at the party favors table that again would put to shame any gifts you would think appropriate to give an 8 year old child!

All in all, a pretty exciting, fun-filled, "normal" Thursday night in the Magic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia!