Kuwait built itself an island off Gulf Road, and for the price of a coffee you can spend an afternoon on it. Green Island runs about three kilometres, is operated by the Touristic Enterprises Company, and opens daily from 9am to 10pm. Ticket sales stop at 9pm, so a late arrival finds the booth closed and the place winding down.
Entry is 1.500 KD for adults and for children from two years old — one price, no tiers.
What is inside justifies more than a walk on the sand. A 35-metre tourism tower looks out over the whole island and the water around it. There is an artificial lake fed from the Gulf, and a Roman-style amphitheatre seating more than seven hundred.
Families get the run of it: a children’s castle, a playground, a train that circles the island, and bicycles for hire in adult and child sizes. A cable park handles the watersports side, open from age twelve, with anyone under eighteen required to have an adult present.
One rule is absolute: no barbecuing anywhere on the island. Leave the charcoal in the car.
At this time of year the last hours of daylight are the ones worth having — the heat breaks, the shadows stretch, and you still have close to four hours before the ticket booth closes.
Photograph: the beach at Green Island, Kuwait. Photo by Rameena ans, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; taken in 2016.
Source: Touristic Enterprises Company, Green Island page on its own site.
Kuwait One, once a week.
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