My brother, Jeff, came to visit for a week at the very end of March. Here are some highlights....
Islamic Museum of Art pictured below. There was a big festival in the park to the right of the museum. One of the "highlights" was the opportunity to eat dinner suspended from a huge crane, a couple hundred feet in the air...this country is strange....Sergey's highlight was jumping on the trampoline. Not sure how to turn the video around.
Then we headed into the desert. Every newbie to Qatar needs to go on a dune bashing ride. At one point the driver drove backward down a HUGE sand dune. We also went swimming in the Gulf at the little "camp" that the tourist company has set up. It was unexpectedly quite cold, considering the temperature outside.
Untouched Qatar....perhaps a bit more of the country should be left this way.
Sergey got a front row seat...
No trip to the desert is complete without a bit of ATV riding.
On to the camel races...now this is something to see! About 35 minutes west of where I live is a huge camel track. For weeks, I tried to find out which day/time might be a race. It's not easy to find out this sort of information. I kept being told to just head west on Duhkan Rd in the morning and even if there aren't races, you'll see lots of camels. So we went. Wow! I'm not sure how to describe it, but I definitely felt like I wasn't in the same country anymore.
Men (from Oman? Yemen? who exercise the camels)
Now
that small children are no longer used to race the camels (thankfully),
little robots do the job. This is what they look like. The whips move
in a circular motion getting the camel to keep running. Not sure how
much it hurts the animal of course...
Video of the camels exercising.
Momma and baby camel with trainer
And now for the grand event! We saw a race on a big screen and drove over to watch it, only to realize that we were about to be run over by the speeding vehicles cheering on the actual race...so we decided to join in. The funny part is that I have a little Honda City, and everyone else had a Land Cruiser. Camels can keep up a pace of 40 km over the course of the 1 mile (give or take) track.
Camel Races Qatar 2013
Next,
we fly to Dubai. I thought it was a great idea to fly there and back
in 1 day...not so smart. One looonnngg day, but fun.
That would be Sergey about to ride down the snow hill in a huge ball....actually Jeff did it too!
The contrasts in this photo are incredible. Snow tubing inside a mall, with people watching from restaurant and store windows, and look who is about to ride down the hill! An Arab man and woman, dressed in traditional clothing, with huge winter coats on top.
There is even a chair lift.
Can't forget the penguins!
I was most looking forward to the penguin encounter, but it was rather uneventful. They have it set up as essentially a photo taking (with professional photographers only, of course) opportunity. They are very cute though.
Burj Khalifa-the tallest building in the world. (by a lot) It's rather impressive and the views amazing....
My favorite part of Dubai?? A genuine Texas Roadhouse, complete with peanuts, country music, and baseball on TV!
I am not ashamed to admit that I really liked Dubai because it feels very western.
This was a real treat...I had done zero research on Dubai so I didn't even know they have a fountain show. Disney has it's work cut out for them....
Dubai Mall fountain April 2, 2013
The last thing we did was go to a hotel pool/beach for some sun, beach kayaking and swimming.
It was GREAT to have a familiar face here in Qatar, even if only for a week. 11 more weeks until we are in the States for the summer. Yay!
Islamic Museum of Art pictured below. There was a big festival in the park to the right of the museum. One of the "highlights" was the opportunity to eat dinner suspended from a huge crane, a couple hundred feet in the air...this country is strange....Sergey's highlight was jumping on the trampoline. Not sure how to turn the video around.
Then we headed into the desert. Every newbie to Qatar needs to go on a dune bashing ride. At one point the driver drove backward down a HUGE sand dune. We also went swimming in the Gulf at the little "camp" that the tourist company has set up. It was unexpectedly quite cold, considering the temperature outside.
Untouched Qatar....perhaps a bit more of the country should be left this way.
On to the camel races...now this is something to see! About 35 minutes west of where I live is a huge camel track. For weeks, I tried to find out which day/time might be a race. It's not easy to find out this sort of information. I kept being told to just head west on Duhkan Rd in the morning and even if there aren't races, you'll see lots of camels. So we went. Wow! I'm not sure how to describe it, but I definitely felt like I wasn't in the same country anymore.
 |
Men (from Oman? Yemen? who exercise the camels)
Video of the camels exercising.
And now for the grand event! We saw a race on a big screen and drove over to watch it, only to realize that we were about to be run over by the speeding vehicles cheering on the actual race...so we decided to join in. The funny part is that I have a little Honda City, and everyone else had a Land Cruiser. Camels can keep up a pace of 40 km over the course of the 1 mile (give or take) track.
Camel Races Qatar 2013
The contrasts in this photo are incredible. Snow tubing inside a mall, with people watching from restaurant and store windows, and look who is about to ride down the hill! An Arab man and woman, dressed in traditional clothing, with huge winter coats on top.
Can't forget the penguins!I was most looking forward to the penguin encounter, but it was rather uneventful. They have it set up as essentially a photo taking (with professional photographers only, of course) opportunity. They are very cute though.
My favorite part of Dubai?? A genuine Texas Roadhouse, complete with peanuts, country music, and baseball on TV!
I am not ashamed to admit that I really liked Dubai because it feels very western.
This was a real treat...I had done zero research on Dubai so I didn't even know they have a fountain show. Disney has it's work cut out for them....
Dubai Mall fountain April 2, 2013
It was GREAT to have a familiar face here in Qatar, even if only for a week. 11 more weeks until we are in the States for the summer. Yay!
Love reading about your adventures!
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