Riyadh - Live, Work, Family

I'm not sure I would say that weekends in Bahrain are totally out of the question.

For instance, when I worked in Yanbu, we would sometimes go to Bahrain - admittedly not every weekend but maybe a couple of times a year, usually on long weekends. From Yanbu, we were allowed to fly to Dhahran on the company flights, on a "space available" basis and no more than once a month. I'm not 100% sure but I think if you're working for Aramco in Riyadh, you might also be eligible to use the company flights to Dammam. You could then hire a car from the airport and drive to Bahrain.

Another possibility, if you don't mind the expense, would be to fly direct from Riyadh to Bahrain on a commercial flight.

However, even assuming that you don't want to fly and cannot get on the company flights, driving is still an option. Depending on how much you like driving (and the roads are pretty good over here) getting from Riyadh to Bahrain by car is certainly doable.

According to Yahoo Answers: "Riyadh to Al Khobar is about 3.5 - 4 hours depending on where you leave from in the city. Khobar to Bahrain can take up to 2 hours or more to cross the bridge, depending on the traffic. At the very least, you'll spend an hour probably. So, overall, 5-6 hours from Riyadh to Bahrain is a good estimate."

Although I've never driven direct from Riyadh to Bahrain, based on my experiences of driving Dhahran - Bahrain and Dhahran - Riyadh , that sounds about right to me.

Especially on the afore-mentioned long weekends (usually 3 days) you might well find it worth the drive. You could even do it on a normal weekend but you might not fancy that long of a drive for the sake of a day and a half in Bahrain - although I guess it depends on just how keen you are to get away.