Day 3 - 5: Doha, Qatar

Day 3 began in the air conditioned comfort of the Museum of Islamic Arts, conveniently located only a few blocks from our hotel.

The museum is a huge modern building down on the water with a massive collection of middle eastern artwork, including Arabic calligraphy, intricately carved wood panels, ceramics, jewelry and more.

Lunch in he museum consisted of camel cottage pie, yep - we ate camel, and white mushroom and haloumi soup! Delicious. 

After lunch we wandered through the Islamic Cultural Centre, a big spiral topped building that looks like a sandcastle (below on the far left). The centre has a mens' and ladies' mosque open to those who aren't Muslim so we were able to have a look inside. 

Later that day, we were picked up by Brooke, a friend of mine, who took us down to Souq Waqif (the markets). The Souq is a maze of alleyways full of stalls selling everything - traditional jewelry, clothing, food, spices, traditional home wares, toys, and souvenirs. 

  

We wandered the stalls amongst throngs of Qataris dressed in the traditional garb that made it feel like we'd stepped into an Arabain Nights movie! We went into one of the many restaurants in the Souq for another dinner of delicious middle eastern cuisine! This time we ate at a Syrian restaurant - 'Damasca', I even tried a few puffs of Brooke and Ben's flavoured tobacco through the shisha.

I'ts such a different culture here. Doha comes alive at night with most people only heading out for dinner around 8-9pm. At 10pm each night we've discovered it's normal to see families, with young kids and babies, sitting down to start their evening meal, or wandering the shops which are open well into the night.  But it makes sense, after all, by 10pm at night it's dropped to 36 degrees, which seems almost cold compared to the 50 degree days!

On Day 4, we had a pre organized tour at Aspire Dome, the sports complex equivalent to our AIS in Australia. Melanie, a work friend of Ben's dad, showed us around the multi million dollar complex and explained to us how the program works. Melanie works in a program attempting to identify young talented females. The girls must train in a completely female environment with security at the doors to prevent males entering as they are not wearing an abaya or hijab. Unfortunately once a lot of the young girls reach puberty they stop training as their fathers and/or brothers no longer allow them to.

The hotel at Aspire is the torch, it's a 300 odd metre tall cylindrical building with 47 floors. On the 19th floor a pool juts out from the wall, hanging over 100 metres off the ground!

Next door to Aspire is the Vilagio shopping mall.  Like the name suggests, it has an Italian design with the ceilings painted like the sky, canals running through the walkways and gondolas available to sail up and down in. There's also an ice skating rink in the middle of the food court! Much to Ben's displeasure I got some shopping in!

That evening we went back to the Souq for dinner at 'Al Adhamiyah Iraqi Restarurant' and a few more hours wandering the alleys and browsing the stalls. We also walked up to Doha's Grand Mosque.

On Day 5 we caught a taxi to the 'City Centre', the biggest mall in Qatar. From there we got on board the 'Doha Bus', the city's new hop-on hop-off tourist bus that tours all the major tourist sites around town. The company was still in the trial phase and we ended up getting it for free and were the only ones on board - our own private tour bus! 

We rode the bus from City Centre up to Katara - the man made beach and shopping centre, however being Friday - the holy day, everything was closed, so we stayed on board and continued on to to 'The Pearl' - the man made residential and shopping circular island built around a central island. The middle is full of water where all the residents park their yaughts.  

We stayed on the bus for its entire loop which took us back through town, down past the Souq and the Museum of Islamic Arts before finishing back at City Centre again. We had a late lunch at Applebee's where I tried a burger with 'beef bacon' - no pigs are harmed in the making of beef bacon! *Sigh* ...it's just not the same.

We ended our final day in Doha back at the Souq. Ben met the local firies and had a look over their truck before we headed back for an early night, ready to fly on the next day for leg two of our adventure. 

Day 1 - 2: Doha, Qatar

On Day 1 we flew out of a very wet, cold winter day in Canberra to Melbourne where we boarded our Qatar Airways flight to Doha, Qatar. 

We arrived in Doha at 5.30am on Day 2 to a sweltering 33 degrees, which later reached a max of 45 degrees!

We flew Qatar Airways and I was thoroughly impressed. Every seat had its own entertainment unit with hundreds of movies and tv shows, including new releases. There was pretty decent leg room, for me at least, the food was great and I even managed to sleep eight of the 13.5 hour trip.

After landing early morning we went through customs and got our bags. A quick taxi ride later and we were at our hotel, checked in by 8.00am.

The rest of the day was a lazy day, acclimatising and getting over jet lag. We walked a few blocks at lunch time... big mistake! The heat is dry which is bearable, but the wind is like an oven and the sun is intense. So we escaped back to the air con of our room for the arvo until it cooled down.

Around 8.00pm we met up Brendan with a friend of a friend of Ben's who took us to dinner. We ate at a restaurant called Al Mourjan on the Corniche Promenade, sitting outside alongside the waters of the Persian Gulf with a spectacular view of the new part of the city of Doha. The food was great - plates of cold mezza: dips, bread salads etc for starters, and mixed grill for mains. 

After dinner, Brendan drove us around into the new city and out to Katara for ice cream with a view over the water back at the city. On the way home we detoured past the man-made island 'The Pearl' before arriving back at our hotel around midnight, exhausted!