Riyadh, the capital city of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We toured the city today, and perhaps this picture summarizes my impressions. First, there is construction everywhere. In the distance you can see several towers going up that will house the governmental financial functions of the city. Think the Fed. Also on the boulevard to the left you can see that it is full of cars. Traffic in this city is a real problem. We crawled along at times, giving me enough time to study license plates and learn the numerals they use. The Arab states use Eastern Arabic numerals (٠ - ١ - ٢ - ٣ - ٤ - ٥ - ٦ - ٧ - ٨ - ٩) derived from India, rather than the Arabic numerals used in the West, but their license plates use both so I could quickly figure out the system and then could read other signs that only used their numerals. This is what you do in a traffic jam.....
The last observation from the photo is that they have a real smog problem. Yes, that's an LA-quality haze on the horizon, due to all the cars, the construction stirring up the sand, and the temperature inversion that's giving us relatively cool weather today. They need to develop light rail or subways pretty quickly.
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