Day 3: Doha

There's no reason to get up early in the morning when it's too hot to go outside, so we had a nice lie in this morning and headed down to breakfast some time after 09.30. I remembered to take a photo of my Qatari cooked breakfast with beef bacon and chicken sausage this morning

The hotel we're staying in is really very beautiful. Even the corridor with the lifts is fancy.

We decided to spend some time reading in one of the lounge areas, so that we weren't in the way when people came to clean our room.

Definitely the poshest hotel lounge I've ever sat in!

After a while we went back to the room and I caught up on yesterday's blog while Tim did a bit of work. I noticed yesterday that there's an unusual arrow on the ceiling of our room.

Maybe telling us which direction we need to face to pray?

We broke up the afternoon with a trip to the hotel gym, which is on the 26th floor of the building. 

This is definitely the best view I've ever had from a treadmill!

In the late afternoon we braved the outdoors, taking the metro one stop to the south and getting off at a place called Katara Cultural Village. From the pictures I'd seen on the internet it looked like it was going to be really interesting.

When we got off the metro we walked through what looked like a very expensive department store and emerged onto this high street.

The decorations were rather extravagant.

We also realised that we could see the huge setting sun in the distance.

This part of the cultural village consists of shops and restaurants. It seemed very popular with the locals.

The best part was that somehow this street had outdoor air-conditioning(!) and so it felt pleasantly cool to stroll around.

We soon had to step back into the heat, because I wanted to try and find some of the more cultural parts of the cultural village. 

This is the Katara Mosque and it's an absolutely beautiful building.

I really loved the patterns on the walls...

...and the minaret was stunning too.

Just by chance, we ended up being there on time to hear the call to prayer.

Next to the mosque are these very strange towers: the pigeon towers! 

Falconry is very popular in Qatar and these towers are somewhere the pigeons can go to escape predators.

We rounded a corner here and found ourselves outside... the amphitheatre!

I have no idea why there is an amphitheatre here. It definitely isn't a genuine historical one!

First of all we walked around the outside, where there are some rather unusual sculptures.

Then we explored the inside, which is absolutely huge.

Very impressive though!

There are some beautiful fountains along one of the edges of the amphitheatre.

They were changing colour and alternating between shooting high and low.

We realised that in the distance we could recognise some of the towers as not being far from our hotel.

There was a great view of the skyline in the other direction too.

The whole place was quite spectacular.

There's a second mosque in the cultural village which I wanted to see.

It was hard to get a good picture of it in the dark but this is the golden mosque and it's very golden!

We had a little stroll by the beachfront and then started looking for somewhere to get some food.

We ended up in a Lebanese/Armenian restaurant, where we had a nice chicken kebab with chips.

No alcohol again but there was a menu of mocktails! I had 7Up with grenadine, which was really nice and refreshing.

Tim had a combination of tropical fruits.

We ordered some desserts without really being sure what we were going to get. Tim had a traditional Lebanese pudding...

...while I had these baklava-like rolls made of crushed walnuts. They were sweet but very, very dry after a few mouthfuls!

Then we walked back through the cultural village towards the metro station. The mosque looked fantastic lit up at night.

Once we got to the high street it seemed like it was just starting to get busy.

There were lots of locals out and about.

We figured out the secret of the outdoor air-conditioning: there's cool air coming up out of these vents in the street.

We caught the metro one stop back towards the hotel. I forgot to take pictures yesterday but whenever there are symbols of people on the metro signs, they're all in Qatari clothing.

This was the sign on the side of the escalator...

...this was the sign for the help point...

...and this was the sign for the taxi rank.

We've had a really fun stay in Qatar and seen a lot despite the weather  Tomorrow will be a new adventure, with an early start as we catch our 08.20 flight to Tanzania!