After a couple years not venturing out of our homeland, this
year Aimee and I turned our sights toward a trip to Africa. (If you have good taste in American 1980s
music but a lacking mental library of afro-vibes, Toto is now running
through your head). I’ve been to the
continent once, but Aimee has not. We had begun brainstorming a year ago or so and
had decided Senegal and The Gambia would be a nice “two-for”. Additionally, a friend we had met in a “Chicagoans
in Nashville” group had recently spent time in Senegal and her photos and
videos on Facebook looked fantastic. Unfortunately,
we realized that the timeframe we’d be travelling would be at the beginning of
Ramadan and Senegal is a Muslim country. For Muslims, this is a month-long holiday of fasting
and restraint. For a non-Muslim visitor,
this generally results in limited hours of restaurants and attractions and a
much more subdued environment during the daytime hours. In other words, probably not the most exciting
time to travel, unless your Muslim and travelling to spend time with family for
sundown festivities.
As an alternative, we shelved our Senegal/The Gambia plans
for another day and set our sights on a safari in Kenya (which is majority Christian)
along with some independent exploration of Nairobi. As a loyal American Airlines frequent flyer,
this routed us through Doha, Qatar, which allowed for an opportunity to add a
stopover for a day and tour of the city now that the 2022 World Cup festivities
have long passed.
Our departure date included approximately 24 hours of continuous
travel and began without incident as we headed from Nashville to a seven hour
layover in Philadelphia followed by a 15 hour flight to Doha. Fortunately as a frequent flier, I was able
to secure a complementary “systemwide” upgrade for the trip out to Doha on American Airlines, but not the flight
to Kenya nor return trip serviced by American’s partner Qatar Airways.
Exhausted by a week of tying up loose ends with kids, cats
(all 6 of them---they need their own blog), and the house, we boarded our
flight to Philly, I enjoyed a cocktail, and both of us fell asleep. We were apparently still groggy exiting the
plane since we were in Terminal F at PHL and while we thought we were following
the signs for Terminal A, we suddenly found we had accidentally exited the
secure area, placing ourselves directly outside security. (Oddly we both swore we followed the overhead
sign that said it would take us to the A/B/C/D terminals.) Fortunately we had several hours available to
us and therefore the exciting unplanned experience of going through TSA a
second time that morning did not interfere with the rest of our plans. This put us right back where we were a few
minutes earlier, and this time we watched very closely and found we had missed the
sharp turn at the top of an escalator that would get us to the A terminal
instead of exiting the airport. Eventually
we found our way to our terminal and then the Admirals Club where we got
ourselves comfortable and remained for the long layover until our flight.
After dinner, one of the flight attendants came by with a
cart of pajamas. He offered me a pair which I declined. When he got to the other aisle and went by
Aimee she accepted. She didn’t realize I
had declined and so she turned to me and asked if I got mine. I said I did not, and she told me I needed to
so that we would match for our “pajama party.”
“Seriously?” I asked, and she insisted I chase down the attendant and
get my pair. I begrudgingly obliged. When I found the attendant and asked, he chidingly
said “you said you didn’t want any.” I
told him that my wife said I needed to match her. He laughed and said she
actually just doesn’t want to have to iron your clothes after you sleep with
them. I got back to my seat and after watching
a movie, I had to use the rest room, and figured it was as good of time as any
to put on the pajamas. I did, and
returned. Aimee looked a bit surprised
and asked why I put my pajamas on now? I
reminded her that only a couple hours ago she told me we needed to match. She said “Yes, I wanted you to have the
matching pajamas but I wasn’t going to wear them today!” Quite annoyed, I slept the rest of the trip
having a pajama party by myself.
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| Pajama party of 1 :-( |
Even with our lie flat seat and Casper mattress pad provided, I did not have a very restful sleep as we began our descent into Doha. I hoped the excitement of a new country would keep me awake.
Doha, grew as a city in the late 19th and early
20th century because of the pearling industry, and an abundance of
pearls off the coast. After the pearl
market collapsed in 1907 however the country tapped into another natural
resource. Oil. This brought in wealth that caused dramatic
growth into the small country. There are
still many references throughout the country to the roots in the pearl industry
however. In the last 20 years however there has been tremendous growth and development
resulting in what is now a large but very modern bustling city.
Without too much trouble, we gathered our luggage after
deplaning and found a taxi to get us to our hotel. It was now early evening in Doha, but the sun
had set. The roads were colorfully lit with
streetlights designed to look like palm branches, and many of the utility poles
were covered in pink lights. As we neared
downtown, we could see the very colorful, and brightly lit skyline with dozens
of skyscrapers, many of which were lit up top to bottom. Some of them even had
animations on the skin of the building that stretched the height of the entire
building.
After a short drive we arrived at the Hilton Doha, where
were surprised with a complementary upgrade to a panoramic room which had a large
family room, living room, office, and massive bathroom, and a tremendous view
of the gulf. 
Enjoying our Balcony 
Doha from our Room
We showered, and headed out
to explore Doha. Our first stop was Souq Waqif. If you are not familiar with the middle east,
a souq is a traditional market. These
can be designed for certain items (such as gold, or spices) or just a general
market that has a variety of goods.
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| Souq Waqif |
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| Aimee at the Handicraft Section |
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| Entering Souq Waqif |
Souq Waqif was absolutely massive, and we unfortunately only had about an hour and 45 minutes to explore. The market was packed with people shopping at the stores, dining at the restaurants and
smoking hookah/sheesha at the cafes. Throughout the entire souq you were embraced with scents of
perfumes, hookah, or food. While the souq had various narrow corridors past all sorts of stalls large and small, Aimee noticed it was organized by type of goods being sold. After checking out a lot of the handicraft stalls, we ended up near the pet store stalls. To Aimee’s delight we came across a row of stores offering cats up for adoption. After attempting to pet every cat in a cage, (and perhaps chasing down a couple stray wandering the street, we realized it was getting close to closing time (10pm) , and began to look for an exit. I then remembered there was one thing I wanted to see that I hadn’t yet--- the Falcon souq.
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| Falcon Souq |
I pulled up a map on my phone to attempt to find how to get to this very unique section of the souq, and we headed that way.
Falconry is very popular in Qatari culture, and the first thing we came across was a falcon hospital. Around it were many store fronts that were set up to sell or work with falcons. Most were closed at this point, but we found one that was still open and a couple workers inside. They let us in and spent a few minutes with us and allowed us to see some of the falcons.
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| Ryan (hard to get avoid getting the crowds) |
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| Photos Outside the Souq |
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| Downtown in the Distance |
After wandering through the Souq, we headed to our dinner at Yasmine Palace. This is located on “The Pearl”, which is a residential and commercial development on a man-made island in the Persian Gulf. Life continues late into the night in Doha, and our reservations were for 10:30. The restaurant is incredibly ornate. We stopped at the bathroom first, (to wash our hands from all the petting of cats at the souq), and even the bathroom struck both of us at how beautifully they were designed.
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| Yasmine Palace |
When we got back to our table, we perused the menu of various dishes and fancy non-alcoholic drinks (alcohol is illegal in most places except hotels in Qatar), and enjoyed a tremendous amount of food. Our young server asked where we were from, and we told him. He did not know Nashville, and asked what we are known for. We said “country music and bachelorette parties” and tried to explain both. The closest he could connect to was rodeos and Texas culture. I explained it wasn’t quite that, but perhaps a much lighter version of it.
I expressed how beautiful the restaurant was, and he said it
was in the style of the Andalusians. He
asked if I was familiar, and I admitted while I have heard of the Andalusians I
knew nothing of the culture/history. He immediately
launched into a 5 minute history of the Andalusian style of Morocco and the
Spanish influence on it, and of the immigration of Moroccans to Qatar. He himself was Moroccans.
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| Dinner |
Now on this trip we executed something we planned for our
last trip, but forgot. We decided to
bring gifts for anyone that we interacted
with and connected with. Unfortunately
when you’re in a place like the middle east where civilization has existed for
thousands of years, its hard to bring something authentic from Nashville with
the same history. We have country music,
Jack Daniels (which as previously mentioned is illegal, especially for Muslims)….
And we have Goo Goo Clusters. So we
brought several boxes to share as gifts. While we knew these were not rich in
history, it is authentically Nashville,
and we figured it would allow us to share a piece of our home with our acquaintances
as they share their home with us. Our
server was the first one that we gave a box to, thanking him for his passionately
portrayed history lesson on the area.
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| Yasmine Palace |
After dinner, we took a bit of time to admire the walkway outside the restaurant along the gulf. The weather was perfect. We continued to walk a bit further past some of the other restaurants. It was now past midnight on a Wednesday night, and all the outdoor seating sections of every restaurant we passed were packed with people relaxing and spending time with family or friends.
We continued wandering back towards the roadways so that we could call an Uber back to our hotel. Something else we realized was that both after Souq Waqif, and our late dinner we had meandered away from the crowd down some smaller streets trying to find a spot an Uber could easily find us. While we had read before going to Doha that it is rated the 2nd safest city in the world, we were just now noticing how there were no panhandlers or riff raff walking the streets, and at no point did we feel the apprehension of being in a dark big city in the middle of the night. Comparing this to our hometown of Nashville, and wandering late at night, it was the polar opposite.
We finally made it back to our hotel, enjoyed a nightcap, at
the hotel Tahitian bar, and went to sleep.
Night Cap at the Hotel
2 comments:
Awesome!
Goo Goo Clusters come from Nashville?
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