Georgia, Azerbaijan and Qatar - July 2022

Vacations are funny things:  you plan months —or as in the case of this trip — years in advance, you anticipate, and then they unfold faster than you can imagine.  Before you know it, they are over, and you are returning to the reality of everyday life, feeding off the memories and photos of your experiences.   With one last day in Qatar, we decided that a “desert safari” would have to comprise part of it.  It is something we wished we had done on earlier trips to the United Arab Emirates but didn’t.  So as we sat in the coffee shop at the National Museum of Qatar yesterday, we called a tour company and set up such a tour.  Our guide arrived promptly at 9AM in a large Land Cruiser and drove us 45 minutes south of Doha to the dunes of the Arabian Desert at Ash Shaq’ra.  Before starting our safari, however, we stopped to ride a camel and hold a falcon.  Both activities were so touristy they were almost kitschy.  But still, we had fun doing bot...

Today being Friday, it was Jum’ah in Islam.  Looking out our hotel window this morning, this bustling city of  1.2 million was eerily quiet.  Everything is closed until 2PM on Fridays.  Even the metro doesn’t start operating until 2PM on Fridays - difficult to imagine! We took our time this morning, enjoying a leisurely breakfast over cappuccinos and planning out the rest of our time in Doha.  The mercury got up to 41C today, so in heat like that — with 100% humidity — you cannot stand around in the blazing sun trying to decide where to go next.  One needs a step-by-step cake recipe for the day ahead. We jumped in our first of eight Uber rides today at 11:40AM and headed to Katara Cultural Village, on West Bay, north of Doha.  It is a creative hub with galleries, an opera house, a Roman-style amphitheatre, etc., all of which is augmented by one of Qatar’s most opulent shopping malls, many restaurants and a few mosques .  The Village covers many h...