Doha - Half-Day City Tour

During my tour to Italy with my wife and her colleagues, we transited at Doha (capital and largest city of Qatar) while waiting for the next flight. Our tour guide engaged a local city tour of Doha. Doha does offer tour packages that allow tourists to experience Doha’s sight-seeing while waiting for the next flight during transit.


The moment I came out from the airport, I could see many luxurious cars on this oil-rich country. Since it was still early (7am++), there were not many cars around even in the city; I guess those rich locals don’t wake up so early.


After had our breakfast at the Kebab King restaurant, we headed to the camel market at Abu Hamour.


The market area can accommodate hundreds of camels of different breeds that are offered for sale. There were shelters and the people there who look after the animals and deal with the customers. I checked with our tour guide on the price of the camel. It was ranging from USD1000 – 2000. These kinds of camels are used for food consumption. While a fast racing camel would cost easily around USD500,000 and above. I got a shocked hearing this.



Hey camels, you been sold!!!


Before I covered with the camel scent, I left the market and stopped at Khalifa International Stadium, which is a multi-purpose stadium in Doha. It was the main venue for the Doha 2006 Asian Games.


Next to the stadium is the Aspire Tower which housed the Asian Games flame. It holds the record for tallest ever games flame and highest positioning of a games flame, which was visible throughout Doha for the duration of the games. Simply amazing!!!


On the journey heading to the city center in Doha Corniche, there were numerous highrise buildings under construction. Doha is now a more expensive city than Dubai in terms of real estate prices. Doha Corniche is a seven kilometre [4.4 miles] long, palm-fringed promenade and dual carriagway, which extends in a horseshoe shape around Doha Bay and the city's sea-front. It is lined with luxury hotels, clubs and apartments; various fine, important government buildings; lovely open, manicured parks with family facilities and public buildings such as museums and a library.




Our next destination will be heading to huge mall called City Center Mall and it’s the largest mall in Doha. Besides 350 shopping outlets, it also have Carrefour, two ice-skating rinks one of which is exclusively for women, 14-screen multiplex cinema, number of cafés and restaurants in addition to two huge food courts, and a famous water park. City Center Mall, Doha also has a large entertainment centre as well as two 10-pin bowling centers.




Busy shoppers at the Carrefour


Feeling bored at the shopping mall as most of the items sold here were branded and expensive and I do not have any Riyals currency, haha…not sure if this is a good excuse to prevent my wife from shopping. It’s a common sight to see the locals at the mall with their branded handbag like LV, BV, Gucci, Coach and etc, to name a few. We rushed our tour guide to the last destination on our itinerary, south side of the Doha Bay. Here we could see the Doha’s skyline.


The building on the right is the Museum of Islamic Art.


One of the wooden boats docked at the bay.


After spending about 10 minutes here under the hot spanking sun, we quickly went into the air-condition bus to cool ourselves. The temperature outside was like almost 40 degree Celcius. On the way back to the airport, I saw this Pearl monument near the Doha Corniche. After doing some researches, I found out that in the early 20th century, much of Qatar's economy depended on fishing and pearling, and Doha had about 350 pearling boats. However, after the introduction of the Japanese cultured pearls in the 1930s, Doha suffered a major depression and Qatar became a poor country, plunged into poverty. I guess this is a memorable monument for the Doha-ian.


Goodbye Doha and we are boarding the plane to Italy!!!