Sunday, November 3rd – Monday, November 4th, 2024
World Tour Days 1-2
Kicked off our World Tour with a 12.5 hour flight from Chicago, Illinois to Doha, Qatar. We flew with Qatar airlines, which I love due to the two full size meals you get onboard. We landed in the evening on the 4th.
The airport is massive with tons of stores, sculptures and food courts. One of the walkways between areas was beautiful: a bridge through a forested area under the unique ceiling. The airport shape resembles sand dunes, which you can see clearly from the outside as you approach.
In the duty free Plaza South area, located behind the escalators between concourse A&B is the Discover Qatar Transit Tours desk. They offer a few different tour options if you have a minimum of a 6 hour layover in Doha. Luckily ours was 9 hours. We joined the 8:00 pm 3 hour city tour, which technically started at 6:30 pm to get through passport control to exit the airport.
The first stop was the Museum of Islamic Art located on the Doha Corniche (waterfront). There wasn’t time to go inside but the outside was aesthetically pleasing too.
Next was the Katara Cultural Village. It houses theatres, concert halls, galleries, outdoor air-conditioned pathways, and the Katara Mosque (the ‘Blue Mosque’).
The tour ended at the Souq Waqif, a relatively newly rebuilt Souq replacing the one that burnt down. We thought it was a perfect market to go to if you haven’t been to a chaotic Souq before and want something to ease into it. No one pushes you to buy anything, the streets were clean, and there were lots of shops and restaurants. There is the only remaining ex-pearl diver from Qatar in the Souq selling pearls in his shop. The shop is easy to find as it has pictures of him from his bodybuilding days.
Then it was back to the airport for a quick dinner before our 5.5 hour flight to Nairobi, Kenya. Overall we thought Doha was a very cool layover; if we get the chance we’ll try and make any future layovers there longer in order to see other museums and spend more time in them.