After spending five nights in paradise at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Islands, we boarded the float plane back to Male, where we caught a flight on Qatar Airways to Doha, Qatar. Since we had a long flight home, we decided to make a 3-night, two full day layover in Doha, for our first visit to the Middle East.
This was our 2012 Thanksgiving week trip and we were using frequent flyer points to fly in Business Class via the Star Alliance network. (Qatar Airways is no longer a member of the Star Alliance.)
Doha is a fast-growing capital city of Qatar, a small but wealthy country on the coast of the Persian Gulf. New skyscrapers were being built like crazy.
We stayed downtown Doha at the Marriott Marquis City Center Doha Hotel, which is connected to the huge City Center Mall.
The City Center Mall has an ice skating rink, and every chain store and restaurant you could think of visiting in a U.S. mall.
The mall is also home to a huge Carrefour, a French-based chain of hypermarkets that we are always interested in visiting in European cities to get a sense of the local food and culture.
The produce section offered an amazing array of choices.
We had to smile at this display of pillows that were branded “Alaska USA.”
After checking out the local shopping mall, we took a cab to the Museum of Islamic Art, designed by architect I. M. Pei.
Inside the museum there are major collections of art, but one of the most beautiful views is out of the 3-story windows looking at the skyline of Doha’s City Center.
On the ground floor there is a cafe with this view, which is stunning.
For our second full day, we decided to get out of the city and explore the desert.
We booked a full-day desert safari adventure tour through our hotel. This hummer pulled up to pick us up at the hotel.
There were also two young men on our tour. They were consultants from Hong Kong working a multi-week project in Doha. We enjoyed talking with them during our ride to the desert.
Our driver/tour guide was from Pakistan. He drove us south of Qatar to a Beach Resort. First, he stopped the Hummer and deflated the tires to make the vehicle ready for dune bashing across the desert.
Mr. Jones sat up front with the driver. I set in the back seat with the two guides from Hong Kong, and held on for dear life.
Up and down and over and through the sand dunes we went. (This was thrilling and yet also a very frightening experience.)
When we reached a huge inland lake, we stopped for a look. Nothing but sand more as far as you can see. Our driver didn’t say much, but he was a cool dude.
After more sand dune surfing, we arrived at the huge inland sea area near the border of Qatar and Saudi Arabia borders.
Our tour had several hours at this desert “camp” with sandy beaches with swimming, beach volleyball, and a buffet lunch.
We chose just to relax and read under the shade by the water. (If we were doing this again, we would take the half day tour that just does the sand dune surfing. The beach is a little boring after that experience.)
Early the next morning, we headed to the massive and crowded Qatar Airport. Here we were about to board our plan to fly to Washington-Dulles Airport.
Here we are ready for take-off for the 14 hour flight from Doha to Washington, Dulles (IAD) Airport. The business class seats are spacious and the champagne is good, but we found the service of Qatar Airways to be lacking, and certainly not the 5-star service that the airline advertises.
Singapore, Cathay Pacific, Thai Airways, United — all of these airlines that we flew on this grand adventure — were significantly better than our experience on Qatar. For example, we had to ask three times to get a bottle of water (on a 14-hour flight.)
Still, we were glad that we made the Doha stopover, and experienced both the city and the desert.
Have you visited Doha? What was the best part of your experience? Please share in comments below.
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