Butterfly in the oasis in the desert: Trip to Al Ula and Mada'in Saleh, part 2

This is the second installment of a description of our trip to Al Ula and Mada'in Saleh. There is a UNESCO designated site for the Heritage Village, known as Al-Deerah or old town to the local people. The houses of the village were made of stones which were taken from nearby ruins. It contains more than 870 houses in 2 story buildings that are linked through a series of alleys. The village was surrounded by a wall and had 14 gates which were locked at night to keep them safe from intruders or attacks.

The pointy construction below is an ancient sundial.

Our sweet friend and fellow traveler (on the far left of the picture) went to the bakery and bought tamise bread and foul (a dish of ground up fava beans, that are sometimes topped with chopped up tomatoes, onions, peppers, etc.) You eat it by dipping the bread into the foul. While the rest of us were up touring the castle and seeing the village, he had set up on a rock a blanket with the tamise and foul.

Obviously, I liked it because I am stuffing my mouth full.

Our guide called a friend to open up another site, which was closed, for us to see. It is the remains of Dedan city and the Al Usoud tombs. It is a series of facades dug into the sides of the rocks. These sculptured works are graves. These are not as detailed and ornate as at Mada'in Saleh, but still interesting.
First, we saw a date orchard.

The guides friend gave us 10 minutes to get up to the top and see the graves because in 10 minutes the next prayer was starting and of course everything stops during prayer. We hustled up there!

One of the graves:

A petroglyph or hieroglyph:

At the end of our first full day there, the friends that we drove up with suggested that we not eat at the buffet at the hotel. They suggested we go on an adventure for food. So, of course, I said yes. The kicker was that most of the restaurants in this city would not have the dreaded "family rooms", so women could not dine in at all. So we decided the guys would get it to go and we would go to a local park to picnic. We stopped at a restaurant that looked like a big open area with huge vats in the back of the room. But they said that they wouldn't have it ready until 8:30 pm and we were very hungry. Finally, we found a sandwich shop, as advertised on his windows, but only sold pizza. (The funny thing was that Ken suggested pizza initially and I said "No, let's find something local." and then we wound up with pizza anyway. The pizza (sandwich) shop owner was quite the salesman for his pizzas. In fact, he wanted us to let him know if there were any opportunities to expand in the US. Anyway, we took our pizzas, fruit drinks and Pepsi to a park, that our guide had recommended. It was at the base of the mountains with pretty lights inserted into the niches.

Here is a picture of us picnic-ing. It doesn't look like much from the picture, but the mountain is right behind us and to the left there is a playground filled with women and children and a miniature horse. The men are at prayer.