Qatar miscellany

Here are a few last tidbits about our trip to Doha, which came to a reluctant end on Friday.

-One day when we were walking on the Corniche, we passed a jumpsuited municipal employee cleaning up litter at the park. He was talking on a cell phone, and it was a nicer cell phone than the one I currently own. Hmm.

-Farther along the Corniche, there was (Jeremy tells me it's called) a half-pipe and all the kids were using it as a slide. It was so freakishly slippery and so much fun for the girls.

-In my entire life, I cannot recall ever meeting a person from Nepal. In one week in Qatar, I met THREE.

-I was aware that the Tour of Qatar (as in, the bicycle race) was going on the entire week we were there. By Friday, our final day in the country, I had given up any hope of seeing it. Then, entirely by accident, we stumbled upon the final stage racing down the Corniche. It was AWESOME. We could not have planned our timing better, and the amazing thing was that we didn't plan it.

-One of the nights we were there, the girls and I spent the entire afternoon walking out and about in the city. We were supposed to go directly from our outing to meet Jeremy and his colleagues for dinner at 7pm, and by that time we were a raging, windblown, dusty mess. I had already been considering buying the girls each a pretty dress at the Souq Waqif and the chance of appearing slightly more sheveled in front of some important people sealed the deal.

The thing is, once the girls had these things on, they were rock stars to the general public. They were mobbed everywhere we went. I'm not trying to say that I'm famous, or that my kids are famous, or that my kids are cuter than yours, or that we're special - I'm just trying to say that it was out of control and I got a feel for what it must be like when the paparazzi are after you. Everywhere we turned, a dozen someones were gawking at Miriam and Magdalena and half of that dozen were busily snapping photographs. If you can imagine.

I leave you with some pictures of pretty buildings in Doha.

To those of you who made it to the end of this post, I give you my overall verdict on Doha. Honestly, there is not a ton of stuff to do there. But what there is, is very nice. I can't see many people making a purposeful, stand-alone trip to Qatar unless they are a completist doing a tour of the Gulf. Again, though, Doha was a pleasant place to spend a week and I appreciated that it was quiet, relatively small, and that its few attractions were very worthwhile.