One Very Full Day in Doha — The road liss traveled

So the morning run and spending time on the waterfront was very pleasant, then it was back to the hotel to shower up and get my day plans sorted out.

Next stop would be visiting the nearby souk (traditional market) and getting some breakfast. While there are plenty of restaurants, it mainly functions as a market. They sell basically everything in the souk, and they have a very very distinct smell, which really gives you that sense of place, as there is always incense burning and wafting around. This part of the world is famous for its frankincense. Plus you have all the spices, dates, perfume shops, just lots of lovely and very particularly fragrant smells walking around these middle eastern souks. I really enjoy it. And the vendors were not pushy at all, it was nothing like being in a souk in Egypt for instance. The perfume shops give you free strips of their popular fragrances without even trying to wrangle you into their shops. And this souk had a bird market too, which seemed pretty random to me.

Gonna need a translation here on what kinda shop is on this corner

The main walking street running through it was where all the restaurants were, and I googled traditional Qatari breakfast, but I could not seem to find what I was looking for. Turkish breakfast, Lebanese breakfast, Yemeni breakfast, but I couldn’t find Qatari breakfast! I ended up at a shakshuka place, which is still a middle eastern breakfast, but more from the N African or the Levant region. Oh well. It was still delicious. And expensive, as this souk is also a very touristy place. Not US expensive though. Even Qatar isn’t US expensive.

The main walking street. Interesting choice of statues here

In terms of food, Qatar is kind of like Australia, they don’t have a lot of dishes that are distinctly Qatari. But food from the entire region is great, so they borrow a lot of other middle eastern or north African dishes. Plus the foreign workers all bring along their own cuisines so you’ll find lots of Pakistani, Indian, Nepalese, Bangladeshi, and Filipino restaurants as well.

Next up would be the Museum of Islamic Art, which is new-ish (2008), has beautiful architecture, and located right on the waterfront. Very well done exhibits, impeccable lighting, a great place to spend an hour and a half during the middle of the day. My knowledge of this part of the world is actually quite limited, so I did enjoy learning a bit of the history, rise of Islam, the changes in art and language in different Caliphates, etc. Although I had to choose between this museum and the National Museum of Qatar, where I’m sure I would have learned more of the history stuff, but I have a short attention span and I like looking at pretty things. So I spent a bit of extra time on wikipedia for the history lessons, the tribal history, surving in the desert, pearl farming, being a British protectorate (gotta protect that India spice route), Independence, finding oil etc.

At least three taxis asked me if I need a ride while walking towards the museum, a minute away from it lol

those people taking photos directly upwards would be me in a few moments

I need a wider angle lens. But Islamic Architecture is very pleasing to the eye

And now I will bore you with some random shots of pieces in the museum

I asked someone to take a photo of me, which I hate doing, and then they always turn out crappy to boot. SquintySunEyes.jpg

Later on I would head to the Katara cultural village, which, I’m not sure if it was because it was late afternoon (lots of places don’t get crowded till after sunset) or what, but it was boring as hell, and I honestly couldn’t figure out what exactly I was supposed to do there? The amphitheater was closed for setting up a concert and I felt like I walked around the whole place in 20 minutes. Surely I missed something. I ended up strolling the waterfront with empty beaches and then hopping back on the metro a few kilometers south, which involved crossing a highway with no crosswalks, it felt like being in certain parts of the US with many parts of the town not designed at all for pedestrians! Then I was back into the strange downtown area.

Some of the deserted beaches. Low 70’s is not yet beach weather I think

The downtown has so many big buildings, but so few people actually walking around, or even looking like they were going in or out of these big skyscrapers. It feels like they were built for people to use eventually, but just not yet. It feels like Doha is prepping itself ahead of time for something like Dubai style growth, or something along those lines. Walking around downtown was also uneventful, but I did get some nice photos back on the corniche as the sun was setting and the lights of the buildings were turning on. Gorgeous skyline.

I need to stop taking photos of the dhows

Being my first full day of travel and still full of energy I decided to hop back on the train and go further north, to the Pearl District, more specifically the Qanat Quartier, which they call the Venice of the Middle East. Although my metro card wouldn’t work on the bus needed to take you there, and buses seemed to be infrequent, so I just walked a few miles, and this wealthy part of Doha is definitely not set up well for walking! Like many places around the world, the rich seem to limit public transit in certain areas to keep the riffraff out. But they weren’t keeping me out!

Finally getting to the walkable canals, looks like a nice spot to live!

As I walked there everything was super nice (besides the lack of sidewalks), beautiful apartment buildings with perfectly manicured yards and gardens (it’s literally insane how many foreign workers they have all around the city doing landscaping, yardword, sweeping, glass cleaning etc. There was an absolutely stunning looking mosque. Many of the apartments were on the water with small marinas and boats, and eventually you get to the very walkable part where the buildings have a more European style and there’s a few canals running through the area ( which is how it has it’s nickname) with shops and restaurants, but I’d say the Qanat Quartier was pretty underwhelming for how much walking I did to get there! Felt kinda like Fort Lauderdale. A nice spot for rich people to drive their boats around.

Kinda creepy beach view of the Lusail building. If I wasn’t so tired I would have liked to check that building out

The bus stop, motion activated doors, air conditioning, tv playing. That’s a nice bus stop!

I’m sure it would be a very nice sport to live, international and cosmopolitan, there were upscale Japanese, Argentinian, Korean, Peruvian, Thai restaurants, but very little that seemed ‘Qatari’. And god damn it I want to eat at least one Qatari staple dish in the country, so I would eventually work my way back to the waqif souk, which should have ‘traditional’ Qatari food. Although I had to walk back to the train station, so all in all it ended up being 50k steps on the day! Yikes. But I wasn’t really in any hurry, and the nice thing about Arab countries is that everything is open late, almost nothing closes before 11 or midnight. Plenty of places open until 3am or so.

I eventually got back to the souk, and it was packed! Like every restaurant you looked at seemed to be fully jammed. Part of this is the weather, because once it gets to summer you can’t even eat outside because it’s just too hot. This time of year the weather is gorgeous, low 70’s in the day, high 50’s at night. I kind of hate being a solo diner when every place is full. It felt like this in Rome.

I soon found a spot at place that advertised “Traditional Qatari Food”. Great! Although I put that in quotes because almost every place that advertises like this are tourists traps, and yeahh this one was too, but I didn’t care, I wanted to sample some traditional Qatari dishes, which I did! They were served in small cheap tins, cafeteria style, from precooked buffet trays in back of the restaurant, and way overpriced, but god damn it, I was finally eating food from the country that I was actually in! It was fine, the chicken majboos dish and the chickpea dish were good, but I knew I was definitely not getting the finest example of the country’s cuisine. Oh well. When you do as little pre-planning as I do, you have to accept everything isn’t always going to be perfect.

That photo wasn’t a picture of my food, which looked much worse, but that’s chicken majboos, the national dish of Qatar .

So that was my two nights and one whole day in Qatar. I finished up in an Egyptian run shisha café, then off to bed pretty early and I flew out early the next morning to the next stop, Dubai.