Al-Ula

And I think that's another thing that on the ground you won't see unless you go there, is that how hospitable the Saudi culture is.

You know, they have beautiful destinations like Al-Ula, which many people don't know about till before.

If you go to a secondary city, such as Abha, it's in the mountains.

You have baboons, you have rock climbing, you have nature that you wouldn't know about, and the hotels that they're building there, the investment, the infrastructure, the airports.

So it was really fun to chat to her.

And beyond 50 Best, we talk a lot about the destinations that Lauren has traveled to recently from the ancient landscapes of Alula and Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast to the vineyards of Georgia.

And I share my hotel of the week in beautiful Portofino,

Italia.

Also the ability to be in such a dark sky region and have the skylight up at night when you're in such luxurious surroundings as well.

It's just a very unique proposition.

Actually, I wondered if it may not be that dissimilar to Alula, which I know that you have a very strong connection to yourself.

I was actually going to mention

It, it goes again to the usual spat between Gulf leaders.

It is the Al-Ula, um, Al-Ula is a very nice place, uh, in, uh, western Saudi Arabia.

There are lots of ruins there, uh, that looks like, uh, Petra in Jordan.

And Al-Ula hosted a summit between, uh, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and Sheikh Tamim, uh, Al Thani of Qatar in December 2021, and they signed Al-Ula agreement.

Al-Ula agreement stipulated that the schism between Saudi Arabia and Qatar was over after four years from 2017 until 2021 of boycott by, uh, Bahrain, UAE, and Saudi Arabia, and the reason for that is because Saudi Arabia and the UAE had a falling out.

So, you know, in a, the usual, unfortunate, um, r- r- rather tribal way of conducting politics, MBS decided that he will court Sheikh Tamim in order to counter the rising influence of the United Arab Emirates at that time and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed.

And to add a, a cherry on the top of the cake, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, you know, who is from a minor cadet, uh, branch of the royal family of Saudi Arabia, is naturally pro-Qatari.

Breaking news overnight, an enormous Yemeni missile attack on Saudi Arabia.

Yanbu, Jeddah, Taif, Abha, Al-Ula, Akhmiz, Mushait all targeted.

The ballistic missile and drone attack is ongoing.

Folks, this is wild.

Rather, it says that Sheba and Dedan, along with the merchants of Tarshish, which is interpreted in various ways, but it's often understood to be either Europe or the West in general, Sheba and Dedan, which is basically modern-day northwest Saudi Arabia.

The regions, the lands of ancient Sheba and Dedan is al-Ula.

It's today the super cool archaeological site of Maiden Salah, which is the southern Petra.

It's about, I'm going to say, about 200 miles south.

So this is already starting.

But what's connecting that's interesting is Al Ula.

Al Ula, there's no idols there, but it's a place where the Prophet ﷺ said, on a journey, don't even stay for a moment or get its shade or get its water, just keep going.

And what did they do? They built a resort there.

in Al-Ula, which is where the Mada' and Saleh are.