Sunday, February 8th.
I was woken up at 2am as the lights went on in my room… then at 5 by a very loud call to prayer… I resisted. I enjoyed the well stocked buffet breakfast with Bernie and Alexandra. Today we had a city tour accompanied by a local Finnish guide named Pia. I had deliberately not gone to the museums in Doha as I knew this tour would include them. The first thing we did was drive out of town to the camel race track where I’d been a few days ago. It wasn’t as busy as then, but we enjoyed watching them. The handlers using the adult camels to train the young ones how run the course and wear the robot jockey. They used to use children but the human rights people outlawed it as there were too many accidents, so robots with mechanical whips it is. Pia gave us a lot of information about the camel racing, the country, the free health care, the education system and helped me identify the difference between Qatari men and Saudis, Qatars wear a collared shirt under their throp (or robe). Some of the men also wear a biege colour rather than the typical white as it is winter and some are made from Kashmir which is warmer. Although all the women wear black the Sauids tend to cover their face and the Qataris don’t, and some even show some of their hair.
Then we drove to the Pearl area which is a high end area of the city on a manmade island, complete with a Roll Royce store across from a Ferrari one. We watched the Crystal Mall where the walkway has inlays of art and artistic scenes imbedded in it. Here we saw a lot of well to do Kataris hanging out in the coffee shops. Then along the Corniche to Souk Waqik where we visited the camels, the Arabian horses and the falcon souk. Pia told us how the Souk was destroyed by fire in 2003. People wanted to build a modern shopping mall on the site, but the Sheikh Tamin wanted it rebuilt to preserve its architectural, cultural and historical identity. It was reconstructed in 2006 and is a vibrant part of the city today.
After that we drove to the National Museum. Both the architecture and the displays inside were stunning and top notch. We wandered around there for a couple of hours before we returned to the hotel for a break. I made use of the pool.
We went for Korean food, which was interesting as it was a meal cooked at your table with some sides. Then back to the hotel for the evening.
