Discovering Doha

I know it's been ages since my last post... Truth is, there wasn't much worth writing about: end of the school year, everyone going away for the summer, hot weather...

But last weekend we drove to another of our neighbour countries: Qatar! Not much different from other small Gulf countries we've visited so far (Kuwait, Bahrain), it's a very young country with a lot of desert and many beautiful modern developments in its capital, Doha. There's still a lot under construction but you can tell it's going to look pretty nice when everything is finished for the World Cup. 

We experienced a terrible sandstorm there, hardly got lost at all (Doha is not such a big city!), ate nice things  (the Turkish restaurant was particularly good), laughed a lot about silly things (I found many things in Qatar particularly confusing), and we visited the beautiful Museum of Islamic Art and the nicely renovated souq Waqif (I refrained from compulsively buying all the appealing Arabic crafts my eyes fell onto). 

And one of the reasons we went to Doha on this particular weekend was that Cirque du Soleil was performing their "Saltimbanco" show in Qatar for 3 days. We had a great night, the show is pretty impressive, with a beautiful set and costumes, live music, and acts including adagio trio, chinese pole (very impressive, especially when the artists hang from the pole horizontally, as if they were human flags), trapeze, juggling, boleadoras, bungee, Russian swings (maybe the most impressive) and much more. 

On the road to Qatar

On the side of the road, hay on sale for local Bedouins' camels

Bedouin camel farm

Saudi border: "Good bay" Saudi!

Grand Hyatt Doha

In a very fancy real estate development called "the Pearl"

A part of Doha's skyline

Still in The Pearl, walking among millionaires

From a distance, The Pearl's logo looks like Disney's: coincidence??

Getting up in the middle of a sandstorm

Museum of Islamic Art

An astrolabe

A Qur'an page showing one of Arabic's many calligraphic styles

A Qur'an page written with an impressively tiny (and yet legible) handwriting

A tale illustration

A huge Iranian carpet

The museum's inside architecture

Souq Waqif

A huge dovecote in Katara cultural village

Mosque - Katara cultural village

Amphitheatre - Katara cultural village

The Torch - Aspire Zone

Cirque du Soleil stage (unfortunately photos were strictly prohibited during the show)

Central Doha skyscrapers

A dhow

And the sandstorm continued on the way back to Saudi

Sand drifting - dunes invading the road

Enjoy your summer wherever you are bound for, I'll be reporting from France very soon! (leaving on Friday, can't wait to lose 30°C at once!)