Marc's Public Blog - Trips to other locations

Qatar airways had a very decent business product, outside of stupidly weighing carry ons of people in business and telling me I have to check in my lithium batteries and laptop because they weigh too much as carry on. That kind of security incompetence is worrisome. Outside of that, the flight was nice once I finally got in and wasted 40mn dealing with this carry on problem and needing to trick them so I could get on the plane with my batteries that are illegal to check in. Thanks to James Lee from points.me for finding me this flight at a reasonable price in miles.

another pajama for my collection :)

almost there, sadly the A350 had windows that did not allow my GPS to work, so I have no idea which way around we went for the 15H flight

Day 1: Souq Waqif

I went to falcon hospital, which was also a falcon resale location:

plenty of eye shields you could buy :)

I loved this cute little baby

Then walk back around town:

the working camels were resting/sleeping

found happy cats, this one was so happy to get scratches

for non cat specialists, it's pretty rare to cats to be so chill and trusting

fancy pigeons

Day 2

the pearl

Next, I took a cheap uber to Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani Museum, a 30mn ride to a private residence with a wonderful collection. Very much worth the trip.

extensive collecion

that Shaik's property is huge

This included a big personal car collection:

From there I went to Katara Cultural Village:

They had a nice french inspired mall, Galeries Lafayette:

I'm not sure how well they were selling french cocktail dresses to jihab wearing arab women though ;)

poubel, haha

Next, I went to the Pearl Island:

Day 3: Starting with Desert Sunrise Tour

sunrise

obligatory selfie ;)

It was still cold but time to go sand boarding. It was a bit different from snowboarding but not too much so:

the only issue was the lack of lifts going back up :)

it also wasn't super steep

after a few runs, I was good, climbing back up was work ;)

Next was to visit the inland sea:

Next, required camel ride :)

It was nice to get another falcon, this time without eye shield:

beautiful bird

picture with my guide and driver

I signed up for the optional ATV ride after that. As expected, it was lead follow and too slow, but that's pretty typical since it can dangerous if you flip over and most drivers have no clue and will hurt themselves:

to be honest the dunes were easier than Oceano, CA, and we didn't even get to ride them up and down on the steep parts

After the tour, I went back to check out from my room and go to down to see a few more things, starting with a Quran learning center in town:

Then went to the impressive National Museum:

Views of the bay:

Then went to the Islamic Art, which doesn't actually have so much on display, but the pieces that are are nice, and the building is absolutely wonderful:

Next went to Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab Mosque (State Grand Mosque) which was open to visitors during prayers:

thankfully I came right in between 2 prayers, so it was empty

And then I went to Education City Mosque which was indeed a stunning building:

From there, I was in some university oark and I figured out their free trams would take me to the museum of modern art, otherwise a 45mn walk away. It was not a must do museum, but I was closeby, so why not?

At this point, I was done with the 2 day tour google gemini gave me, so I looked for extra suggestions and Aspire park was an interesing area. Unfortunately the default location I picked got the driver to drop me on the wrong side:

I think this was built for the FIFA world cup

eventually I got inside the mall, but it took a while. It was very cool though

lucky me, I needed a new Louis Vuitton bag

they even had a carrefour for me to do my shopping :)

AFter that, although it was not on the google tour, it was obvious from the skyline that I needed to go West Bay for the wonderful skyline:

I got there just in time for sunset, lucky me

wee :)

magical sunset as always

I stuck around for the lights to come on

After that, it was time to go back to the airport. Qatar airlines nicely charged me almost $300 luggage overage because I had 51kg totaly instead of 40kg (11 extra) as from Doha it's 40kg total, not 2x 32kg, sigh...

nice lounge though

seats were nice, but only 6h flight, not much time to sleep

they had a lounge area and bar. Nice idea but didn't get a single drink or food on that plane, slept from takeoff to landing

Ending Thoughts

The country also felt super cheap. My private desert sunrise tour was a mere $150 for 4h+ and a private guide and driver. Ubers would often cost $5 for shorter rides, or $15 for longer ones. I gave big tips to each driver as it felt way too cheap.

How you should feel about the country itself (like I'm not a fan of Maldives because of their lack of basic human right policies), Qatar, "it's complicated". It wsa blockaded by its neighbors for many years, until very recently, because they deemed they were to helpful to terrorism organizations. The details are more complicated, you can read this or whatever other sources you'd like to find.

All in all, I wouldn't say that Qatar is a must do destination, definitely do Dubai and Abu Dhabi first, but given my layover there, it was a very interesting 2 days that were definitely worth the stop