Travel Program

 

The Sphinx and Great Pyramids, Delegation to Egypt (2018)

Bringing Los Angeles to the World

LAWACTH Signature Travel offers members the unique opportunity to engage with country’s across the globe through first-hand cultural exchange. Delegations are both informative and enjoyable — including special access to local experts, artists, entrepreneurs, and political leaders, who give private briefings and unique behind-the-scenes insights to the country's history and current events.

Meeting with Poland's Deputy Foreign Minister Maciej Lang at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Warsaw Tour of Eastern Europe (2019)

A designated Council staff person accompanies each tour to assist with logistics, customer services, and ensuring our members have a smooth experience from the time they sign up for the tour to when they land back home after. Having Council members travel together means that you will have the chance to meet globally-minded people from your area, who can share this experience with you during and after your travels.

Private Dinner with Prime Minister of Bhutan Tshering Tobgay (Left); At UNESCO World Heritage Site Persepolis in Shiraz, Iran (Right)

Working closely with our vast global network and world-class travel operators, tour participants get a truly one-of-a-kind experience that will help them gain insight into complex and unique destinations beyond what independent travel or more traditional tour programs could offer. We look forward to traveling with you!

For more information, please email travel@lawac.org

11

Saudi Arabia

From Ancient Trade Routes to Contemporary Society

Tour Highlights

  • Meet local officials, entrepreneurs, journalists, think tank leaders, urban planners and archaeologists
  • Explore UNESCO World Heritage sites including Madain Saleh, Diriyah, historic Jeddah and Al Hofuf
  • Enjoy exclusive tours of traditional villages of ancient tribes and the newly opened King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture
  • Taste traditional and contemporary Saudi cuisine

We invite you to join us this fall as we explore a country which, in a bid to shift the economy away from its dependence on the petroleum industry, has just opened up to visitors for the first time in its history. Discover a country where ruins from ancient civilizations and date palm oases’ contrast sharply with urban centers and ambitious plans for a new $500 billion city state to cover 10,000 square miles of rocky desert and empty coastline. Saudi Arabia is going through sweeping changes and our program offers a unique opportunity to look at these changes up close.

Our program begins in historic Jeddah, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Admire its unique, centuries-old, multi-storied white urban dwellings and meet with staff from Art Jameel a major educational program dedicated to teaching students traditional building techniques. Enjoy lunch at the home of Mr. Sami Nawar, Jeddah’s official historian. After lunch, head to the dunes just outside of Jeddah to understand better the Bedouin lifestyle and falconry

After a refreshing swim in the Red Sea fly south to enjoy the striking mountain scenery around Abha. Explore remote villages that once served as vital trading points between Yemen, Makkah and the Levant by way of the Red Sea. Meet with men from the Qahtani tribe who wear garlands in their hair while working as farmers in the area. Fly through Riyadh to Al Ula and discover the evocative ruins of an ancient city of carved rock tombs, known as Mada’in Saleh. Like Petra, the city was built by the Nabataeans about 2,000 years ago home.  Once a thriving city along the ancient spice route, it played a crucial role in building a trade empire. Today its monumental stone-hewn tombs are some of the last, and best preserved, remains of a lost kingdom.