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| photo taken from the roof of my hotel |
I spent the first days of 2017 in Doha, Qatar. Qatar is a small Middle Eastern country that borders Saudi Arabia. When looking for reasonable airfare to Los Angeles for the Christmas holiday, I noticed that it would be a few hundred dollars cheaper to fly round trip leaving from Qatar as opposed to leaving from Kuwait. I decided to take the cheaper deal and spend a few days exploring Qatar. Plus, I love adding bonus trips to my vacations as an excuse to get a new passport stamp.
I arrived at my hotel around 11:30pm on December 30th. After being in a time zone that is 11 hours behind Gulf Coast time and sleeping for hours on my 20 hours of return flights, I couldn't sleep a wink all night. I watched Netflix and planned on activities for the following day. However, I was exhausted by 10am. I decided to take a brief nap from 11am until noon before heading out into the city. In retrospect, I should have set an alarm. Although I intended on sleeping about 1 hour, I woke up wondering why it was dark outside. I HAD SLEPT UNTIL 5PM! I basically wasted a day of sightseeing. Thanks Jet Lag. I figured I still had plenty of time to check out a local mall called Villaggio, which is known for it's "Little Italy" feel.
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| The ceiling is painted to look like the sky |
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| You can see a bumper car and ice skating rink next to the food court |
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| Shoppers can ride gondolas through the mall's canals |
The next day, I decided to visit Souq Waqif. A souq is a traditional arab market. This market had hundreds of stores with a variety of merchandise including clothing, jewelry, perfumes, pets, and electronics. They also had lots of restaurants. The temperature was around 80F and sunny, which was perfect for wandering around the labyrinth of shops.
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| Souq Waqif |
On my final day in Doha, I decided to visit an area call, The Pearl. I came up with this plan after waking up around 4am for the 2nd day in a row courtesy of jet lag. I decided to go to a restaurant in The Pearl neighborhood. The neighborhood is new and has buildings with Italian architectural influence. I really enjoyed seeing this beautiful area along the coastline and the canals reminded me of my time in Amsterdam last summer.
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| The Pearl |
Overall, I enjoyed my visit to Doha. This trip inspired me to visit other Middle Eastern countries this year. I hope to visit the UAE, Bahrain, and Oman within the next 5 months. All of them are flights that are less than 2 hours from Kuwait.
