>>>Years later I visited and... well, the water depends, not too bad in most of the places, but didn't taste great either.
>>>
>>>As for the bottled water, I've read recently that someone managed to sell sand to the Saudis.
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>>Ah, now that's where you may be surprised. Saudi has to import sand because desert sand is not suitable for construction. It's my understanding that a Liverpool firm, that extracted sand from the sand-dune-strewn flat beaches of that coast, would do just that. I'm not sure what the score is nowadays what with the area being a conservation area (for the natterjack toad) and other fauna
>
>Read that. What I meant, selling bottled water is just another sellers' dream come true. Look how much effort do they have to invest when they sell water disguised as sausage, ham, bread... And it probably took years of effort to sell the idea that it wasn't watered down, it was "fresh", "juicy", "water added for freshness", "marinated"... and these guys are just selling water to people who already have all the water they want.

Oh I fully understood the analogy - it's a well-used english expression for someone who's good at selling. Also "Sell ice to the Eskimos", and for someone who does a hard job unnecessarily we say "takes coals to Newcastle" - once full of collieries. It's just that the "...sand to Arabs" expression is used so much without people realising that sand IS actually sold to them.