Thousands of residents of the Eastern Province as well as neighboring GCC countries are visiting Dammam corniche to enjoy the summer and the festival organized here. Apart from the vast, green and beautiful seaside Dammam has, the shopping festival arranged just round the corner is a major attraction for many. The shopping festival named “summer shopping festival for families and children” is a fun place for families and children to hang out. The pavilions in a huge tent are filled with all the items a family needs including clothes, cosmetics, bags, shoes and other accessories, abayas, traditional snacks of Saudi Arabia, indoor decorative items all the way from China sold directly by Chinese salesmen, toys and other gift items, etc. One of the main attraction of the shopping festival is the Iranian stall, were Iranian men sell their traditional food items, snacks and saffron. They have arranged beautiful handmade baskets items like sun dried and preserved prunes, dried apricots, dried pomegranate seeds which have high medicinal value, other dried seeds like soya beans and nuts and black and red ‘henna'. Iranian sweets also have a lot of buyers, said a salesman there. A special stage has been arranged outside the tent for children to sing and dance rhythmically along the loud music. Children are being encouraged to cheer, clap and dance and to show their talents to the audience. “It is a great opportunity for our children to showcase their singing and dancing talents to the public. It is one of those rare occasions and we do not have much other opportunity here in the Kingdom for a public exposure,” said Amal, an Egyptian mother of three girls aged 10, 8 and 4 years. They all enthusiastically sang a group song to the loud applause of the audience. Malika, yet another visitor, is all thrilled about the shopping festival. “It's really fun to be out here and we get to buy so many things which are otherwise not so easily available in the market like the Iranian sweets. It's really great and I am happy to be here and do not regret that I did not go outside the Kingdom to spend my holidays,” she said. “I was really wondering what to do with my kids and I was not planning to go anywhere else for vacation. This is a good place to come and there are a lot of things arranged for the kids to have fun and hang out with their friends,” said Umm Mohammed, a Saudi national.
