Whirlwind Day In Doha

Okay so you might be able to tell that this is a bit of a time filler whilst I'm busy and haven't been able to get to any events, hope you enjoy anyway.

Never in a million years would I have even considered going to Doha, Qatar, but when the opportunity came up for me to save $500 on my air ticket to England last year by having a 10 hour stop over in Doha, I decided I should give it a chance. I didn't know if I could even be bothered leaving the airport being in a country so different to Australia, but by coincidence, I found out my second cousin lives (well lived) in Doha. 

I left Melbourne's cold winter to arrive in Doha during the start of their 40C+ summer and was met at the airport by my cousin who took me back to her house. The photo above is the view from her balcony. Of course me being me, I have completely researched Doha on the internet and found several places that I really wanted to go in the short time I had to explore.

One place that was not on my list is the picturesque docklands/waterfront area of Doha which is basically a playground for the extremely wealthy. There were boats big enough to live on and high end designer shops such as Chanel and Dior. I couldn't help but think that I was in an expensive version of Aladdin the whole time.

We then headed to the traditional markets in Doha called the Souq, which had all sorts of exotic trinkets from perfume bottles, embroidered shawls and brightly coloured pottery. At this point it was about 9am and somewhere between 40C and 45C so I was starting to get pretty exhausted and I still had several hours to go.

After the Souq market, we drove around for a while so I could sit and be in the comfort of air-conditioning and on our travels we stopped in at a camel market. It was a little bit sad to see so many camels locked up in cages but at the same time I loved it because, lets face it, who doesn't love camels?

On the way to one of the top places on my list to see in Doha, we passed a stadium and sports/recreation area, which I think the World Cup that got stolen from Australia is going to be hosted.

Very high up on my list was this shopping mall called Villaggio that I think I saw on Get-Away or some travel show like that which has a manmade canal with gondolas running through the middle of it. We were running to a pretty tight schedule otherwise I definitely would've taken a ride in a gondola.

After some retail therapy and my first encounter (but certainly not the last) with H&M and Accessorize, we stopped for lunch and I got this amazing berry smoothy.

I'm sad I couldn't stay in Doha longer because I would've loved to see the sand dunes and the desert but I just didn't have enough time. My cousin has since moved to America so I don't know if I will ever get back to Doha, but I certainly haven't ruled it out.