Bafarat Cafe, Jeddah. November 2017
Coffee paradise found and lost and found
AM, one of my few Saudi friends from outside Abha {see: Tabuk}, invited me to visit Jeddah to show me around. I had complained to him that I was "disappointed" with Jeddah after my first visit. He is from Mecca (just down the road), so unlike my friends from Abha who were also tourists on Jeddah visits, AM really had a sense of the place and he was keen that I had a better impression. He knew I loved a nice cafe and a good cuppa, so he introduced me to Bafarat Cafe. It is still one of my favorite cafes in all of Saudi Arabia.
One of the problems of living in Abha at the time was a paucity of places to just "hang out". Of course, the city and region are FULL of amazing viewpoints and places to visit, but bars do not exist and true coffee shops are few and often only for "families" {See: Ragadan Forest Park}. Luckily for me, one of the best cafes in the city at the time was literally a five minute walk from my house. However, going to that same coffee shop for YEARS was wearing me down. I wondered how the Seinfeld crew managed to keep going to that same diner repeatedly?
[Update: AQ informs me that there are upscale coffee shops all over Abha these days!]
When I arrived in Jeddah, AM promised to take me around the city to amazing places. He did deliver! My favorite pitstop, by far, was Bafarat Cafe. We arrived at prayer time and the place was closed (as often happened). AM went off to pray and I sat in the car and waited patiently for him to return and the cafe to reopen. When we walked in, it felt like another world after Abha. A huge open space with two floors and lots of windows struck me immediately as something I had been missing. How ironic that Abha has some of the best scenery in all of Saudi Arabia, yet very few coffee shops nor restaurants there capitalize on view. At Bafarat, a case filled with European-style pastries tempted us as we decided on our coffee - the variety was staggering. In Abha, the choices were usually poorly made donuts or cookies. AND, the bar for ordering at Bafarat was uni-sex, so there were women (!!!) ordering, too. After being in Abha for so long, in the land of pure testosterone, it felt amazing to know women still existed. The "family section" occupied the balcony which overlooked the entire establishment. A brilliant arrangement that let women see everything below, but kept them away from the prying eyes of men. I felt happy that they, too, could enjoy the light and airy surroundings rather than be shut up in some grotto (as many family sections tend to do). After all that time in Abha, I felt as if I were in Paris, rather than Jeddah. AM had really come through!
Unfortunately, we visited using AM's car and I was not really paying attention, so I "lost" the location of Bafarat for a future visit. Additionally, the latinized "Bafarat" was written quite comically (and unknown to me) as "Bafart", so re-locating it on the map was not easy. Fast forward to my next Jeddah visit and enter ALH, a friend from Abha who recently moved to Jeddah to pursue a Masters degree. Before that visit, I told him how much I loved Bafarat, and after some confusion, he told me he had found it. Most unfortunately, ALH was keen to show me his acumen in using voice-activated, ENGLISH, GPS on his phone while driving. Thus, another adventure began.
All those Saudis who studied in the USA must have been impressed by the number of large flags and flag poles. The largest flagpole in Saudi Arabia (perhaps one of the largest anywhere?) is on a main road in Jeddah not far from my usual hotel in Al Hamra. ALH arrived at the hotel on time and was ready to spend some quality time. I said, "I am open to anything but.... Jeddah has terrible traffic and I don't want to spend most of my weekend here sitting in traffic". Understood (ha!). ALH and I decided, first Bafarat (he had never been), and then onward. We circled the flag roundabout and headed north. The English-speaking GPS was taking us on the very short drive to Bafarat - maybe 15 minutes? We got tantalizingly close and then were told to turn where no turn was possible. We became hopelessly lost as the GPS woman (no doubt also frustrated) kept directing us in ways ALH felt were impossibly incorrect. It became a battle of wills. We got stuck in stopped traffic again and again. After much frustration, we were back on the highway and found ourselves, 1.5 hours later, at the flag roundabout. I was upset only because a short journey had turned into an unnecessary traffic nightmare which I specifically said I wanted to avoid. ALH was, of course, mortified that the grand experiment in English-voiced GPS navigation had failed so miserably. He agreed to turn off our lady guide. We again drove a short way north on the highway toward Bafarat. He made the correct turn and we arrived nearly 2 hours after departure from my hotel. Fortunately, a takeaway from that experience was at least learning where my favorite Jeddah cafe was located for future visits.
At the time, I felt extreme frustration at a kind person's hospitality gone awry. Now, of course, the whole experience is just an incredibly funny memory of Jeddah (about which ALH and I had many subsequent laughs). It also serves as a reminder of the dangers of overdependence on technology for simple tasks. More importantly though, I DID find a great place for coffee.