Did you know that a lot of people do a stopover in Qatar for a couple of hours and then continue their travel? Me neither until I found out. My girlfriend and I booked a flight with an extra long layover in Doha so that we could explore the city for some time. Since we only had a couple of hours we didn't have any high expectations. We just wanted to make our own impression from the country since a lot of news are only negative and criticise the country's behaviour regarding ethics, work, women, etc.
The visa procedure was kind of slow and we had to wait in line for about an hour to leave the airport. By metro it is super easy to reach the city center and we were surprised how clean, modern and also cheap everything was. It just costs about 2€ for a daily ticket with the metro. After leaving the metro and being outside in the afternoon we realised quickly how damn hot it is. The sun is literally above your head without any clouds in sight. That is probably also the reason why we saw almost no people at that time. The streets are dead, the buildings give this sepia vibe and a lot of skyscrapers can be seen in the distance. We then had to deposit our hand luggage and thanks to usebounce.com we had no problem with it at all. Heading to the Souq Waqif market first we finally found a place with more people. The traditional market sells all kinds of stuff and it is beautiful to just walk through the alleys. For food we struggled to find a place which accepts card but in the end we found a nice restaurant with local food called Sofia Ummi Lulu. We tried Thareed, which is a stew with bread and Majboos, a chicken rice dish which were both really interesting and delicious.
We then visited the Katara Cultural Village, an area which has impressive buildings, clean streets and a lot of fancy attractions around such as galleries, halls, arts and the beach next to it. I have to admit it is really cool and no clue if there is a person living there but it seems a bit like the rest of Doha, artificial. Nevertheless we could enjoy the sunset and the chants from the mosques. Our last stop was Corniche, a promenade with a view to the skyscrapers. It is a chill place to walk along and we walked till the Museum of Islamic Art which was closed since it was already late but beautiful from the outside. Now that I'm writing this blog I ask myself again why we didn't visit that many other places but then I remembered that there is actually not that much to see in Doha. Of course we missed some spots, like The Pearl but since we didn't have that much time it was a good balance between enjoying and exploring.
So, did my view change that much? I wouldn't say so. It was kind of like expected. I really expected it to be like this. I was just surprised that there weren't many tourists around and even locals are not that many. I liked the fact that it is my first country in the Middle East I have been to but Doha itself is not that exciting. There are only some spots to visit and the rest is kind of deserted. Not that lively, not that fun, not that traditional. All in all I think the stopover was definitely worth it but would I stay longer than a day? Probably not.