Jeddah & AlUla

You are met at Jeddah, the country's second international airport, and driven to your hotel. Jeddah is the most relaxed of the big Saudi cities, and arrival day is left open.

In the evening, the Corniche: more than 30 kilometres of waterfront along the Red Sea, with King Fahd Fountain, 312 metres high, out in the water and visible from across the city.

A full morning walking the old quarter with a guide. The buildings are the reason to come: tower houses of coral stone several storeys high, their facades covered in roshan, the carved wooden bay windows that let air through while keeping the street from seeing in.

Jeddah has been a major Indian Ocean port since the 7th century AD and the gateway through which pilgrims arrived for Makkah by sea. That double role, trade and pilgrimage, paid for the quarter that survives. Restoration is running building by building, so the lanes shift between finished houses and propped ruins from one corner to the next.

The afternoon is free.

A boat out from Jeddah for a half-day of snorkelling on the Red Sea. The Saudi coast runs more than 1,700 kilometres and the reefs on it have had very few divers, which is what separates them from the rest of the northern Red Sea.

Back in town for lunch, then to the airport for the flight north to AlUla. You are met on arrival and driven to your hotel in the valley.

Hegra takes the whole morning. More than 110 monumental tombs stand cut into sandstone outcrops across the desert floor, with decorated facades dating from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD, along with some 50 inscriptions of the pre-Nabataean period and cave drawings. This was the Nabataeans' southern capital, on the incense road running north.

You visit with an AlUla Rawi, one of the local storyteller-guides, travelling between the tomb clusters by vehicle. Daily numbers are capped and the tour is booked before you travel. The visitor centre holds the reconstruction of Hinat, excavated from one of the tombs in 2008.

In the evening, Maraya in the Ashar valley, a twenty-minute drive from the centre of AlUla. It is clad entirely in mirrors, so the cliffs continue across its face and the building very nearly disappears; it holds the record as the largest mirrored building in the world. What is on there depends on the calendar, and it is checked before the drive out is planned.

Dadan first, the capital of the Dadanite and Lihyanite kingdoms, carved into the cliff above the oasis. The tombs sit almost 50 metres up the rock wall, cut as square openings in a line, two of them guarded by carved lions. From the valley floor the scale only registers when you notice how small the people below them are.

Then Jabal Ikmah, a desert canyon whose walls carry more than 300 inscriptions in Dadanitic, Thamudic, Minaic and Nabataean scripts. They record dedications, names and offerings rather than royal proclamations. The canyon was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, which covers documentary heritage and is a separate list from the World Heritage List. There is no ticket, and the path is short and mostly level.

Last, Elephant Rock, 52 metres of sandstone weathered into the shape of an elephant with its trunk to the ground. Known in Arabic as Jabal AlFil, it is at its strongest at dusk, when the rock turns deep red. There is no entry ticket and seating is cut into the sand around the base.

The morning is free before the transfer for your onward flight.

The Old Town lane opens between 8 and 9 in the morning, so it works as a last hour if your flight is not early.