Well, we have just returned to Doha from a trip of a lifetime! We were joined by Liz and James, which made it really fun to have someone to share the adventure with. We packed a lot into just under two weeks, however, we managed to see most of the major sights in both Egypt and Jordan. The tour guides were amazing, especially Walid in Egypt. He was a mine of information and we learned so much history and archeology from him. Above are of course the pyramids, just on the ouskirts of Cairo. The drivers in Cairo are even worse than Doha and frequently drive 3 or 4 abreast where most people would have just two lanes of traffic! I was glad we were driven by some great bus drivers. We stayed at the Marriot and the food was really great. We saw all kinds of temples and the Valley of the Kings, you name it - we saw it.

An extra side trip we decided to take was to go to Abu Simbal. I am so glad we did, it was amazing and so well preserved. We cruised on the Nile for four days, getting off for various sights. I had never been on a cruise before and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. After an early morning start to sightseeing, we really enjoyed our afternoons lying on deck and watching Egypt unfold before our eyes as we floated down the Nile. We were able to see the local people going about their pastoral lives and the sites role by like a giant screen. It was so relaxing sipping our beer watching the world go by and sitting in the sun.

From Egypt we flew to Jordan with several others from our Egypt tour. Again, we packed in a huge amount in three days, of course the highlight was Petra. Walking through the siq, you know what you are about to see, but your first look at the Treasury is as magical as everyone says it is going to be. After lunch, we continued on with a few other brave souls and went up to the Monastery, which is like another version of the Treasury but 700 steps further on and up. However, when you get to the top, there is an amazing view of the Rift valley and of course it is downhill on the way back!

Our flight out on the last day was not until the afternoon and originally we thought we might try to change it to an earlier time. However, we had wanted to see the Dead Sea, which was not included on out tour. The tour director quickly organized a couple of minivans to pick up 12 of us and in about and hour we were there, lathering ourselves up with mud and then floating in the very salty water. It was so buoyant that try as you might, you just could not turn over and it was really funny to see us all bobbing around.

We had such a wonderful trip and took literally thousands of pictures between the four of us. Enough to bore most of our friends for years to come! As the plane touched down in Doha, we both had the feeling that we were coming home. What a great way to end our adventure to the Middle East. We now have a couple of days to finish packing up and to say our goodbyes then back to the snow and ice and to our real home, although I have a feeling that now we have had a taste of adventure, we will have a hard time settling into a rut again before looking for more!

This weekend we drove up to the north west of Qatar and went to Al Zubara. It had been a large settlement area at one time housing about 5 or 6,000 inhabitants. They fished and harvested pearls, until a siege in 1878 bought things to an end. At the moment archaeological excavations are taking place. However, we also found that it is right next to a wonderful beach with lots of wierd creatures to find on the beach. Derek saw a ray and there were lots of sea birds. It was very shallow and would be a wonderful place for young children to play and explore the little tide pools with their small fish.

We walked out along this man made breakwater of local rocks full of tiny shells. I presume it had been here for a long time. All around it were little rock pools full of crabs and small fish, amongst other strange purple wormy like creatures were hadn't seen before. There were also some brown mushroom looking creatures as well.



It is hard to show just how vast this area is, but this gives a little bit of an idea. This is where they are going to build the Friendship bridge to Bahrain. On the map it said 2013. It seems so shallow here, you could almost walk across!

Here is a picture of what is still remaining of the settlement. This is just a small portion of it, there is a surrounding wall with some turrets and the area is suposedly about 54 hectares. We had a great time, paddling in the water and then poking around the settlement. It was an interesting day and unfortunately it is likely to be our last adventure in Qatar. I still have a few more pictures of the leaving party that his coworkers gave him and I went and took more souq pictures of things I always see, but hadn't captured before, so will add some more tomorrow.

This weekend we went back to my favourite beach, Al Ghariya which is in the north east of Qatar. There is a beach resort nearby, but we like the public beach just beyond it and drive through the abandoned village and set up our umbrella on the beach to claim our spot. The temperature was absolutely perfect at about 35 degrees and the water was even refreshing. We stayed in the water for ages and actually had to finally get out because we were starting to get chilly! who would ever have thought it! Derek doesn't normally like beaches and swimming, but with the saltiness of the water, he was able to float and the temperature of course, was lovely. He saw a sea turtle , and every now and again a yellow torpedo like fish leapt out of the water and then skimmed across it like a skipping stone. I dont think we could have dreamed up a more perfect afternoon.

As the afternoon wore on, more Qataris came down to the beach. A couple of groups of ladies in black were at either end of the beach with their children and their nannies, the men had gone out in their fishing boats. They only paddled and I wonder if after Derek had left, they might have gone in the water. Some go in fully dressed and then hand their robe to the maid who then returns it to her when she wants to come out. Others just swim fully dressed. In this instance they just waded up to their knees. As the sun sets, you often see groups of men in their Toyota Land Cruisers stop in the middle of the desert, or in this case on a hill, to watch the sunset. One of the prayer times is at sunset, although I have never actually seen them pray, just look at the sun going down. Qataris come to life at night and often when I have not been able to sleep, I look from our window at the Corniche and it is always packed with cars and with people walking and greeting each other, until at least 2 as that is the latest I have been awake, but it would not surprise me if it goes on all night.

Last night we went out to our favourite restaurant in Souq Waqif. We now know the route through the little alleyways, sometimes taking a detour depending on our mood. This shop is one of our landmarks. It sells some of the largest pots I have ever seen! Outside the store are the really big pots, that you could cook a whole camel in!

As it was our last meal at Cinque Sensi, we decided to be gluttons and go for their set meal for 150 QAR each. What we hadn't realized was that the three choices of anti pasto and three choices of pasta were in fact not choices, they bought all three of each of them! and they weren't small portions either! By the time we got to the main course, we were very full - especially since they always have the most wonderful warm rolls that we cannot resist. However, we had asked if they would change the desert to include my favourite nougat semifredo with almond sauce, and it was amazing how we still had enough room to squeeze every last morsel of that in! The meal ended with a thimbleful of espresso which just set off the sweetness perfectly and was not enough to keep us awake at night. It is a good thing I still have one more session with Mohammed, the personal trainer at the gym in our building. He is very strict about my workouts and I have to go every day or he wants to know why I haven't signed in that day! Without that, I would be in big trouble with all these last meals at our favourite places - we have so many of them!

I am a bit behind again with the blog, but as our time in Qatar comes to an end, we are starting to return to some of our favourite places, or trying to pack in some of those we haven't seen yet. Last weekend we returned to Al Khor island "purple island". To get to the island, you have to wade through two cut-throughs, which, depending on the tide can either be up to your knees or around your ankles. This time we timed it so it would be round our ankles and we managed to successfully negotiate the crossings without seeing the myriad of black crabs about 2" across, which I was very thankful for. They had, however, returned for our homeward trip! The island is known for the purple or in fact red dye that used to be extracted from shells here. A very laborious and expensive business which is why only royalty or very special people used to wear the colour purple. We were searching for the piles of shells left behind from the proces, but were unsuccessful. It would have been nice to have gone with the natural history group here, but, alas, no time. The geology of the island is very strange, with a band of holy rock like the picture shows.

There are mangroves starting and this was a neat picture of showing how the new shoots radiate from the central tree.

The water is very shallow around here and you can see people wading through the water with nets catching their supper. They had strung a net across the whole area and must have been able to catch a lot of fish.

Another picture of the strange geology of the area. We had a great afternoon walking around exploring, and got back to the car just as the sun was setting. Another good time of exploration.

The other night we went for a walk and took a few pictures of the nearby hotels. West Bay, the area where we live, has a number of big hotels as well as various embassies nearby. We took a few photos of the nearby hotels, which all seem to try to outdo each other with their outdoor decorations and lights.

This is the Four Seasons, which we see from our window every night.

This one looks like it has one of the arabic hats on top

This is the Sheraton near us - it is in the shape of a pyramid from the outside and very elaborate on the inside!

This was the picture I forgot to put in my last blog. After we had been driving over the sand dunes for about 20 minutes or so - one of the cars got a flat tire and it had to be changed. I am not sure how they knew it was flat, since you have to let a lot of air out of the tires anyway to drive on the sand. Quite funny to watch though - as our group was full of mostly male engineers, together with the Qatari drivers - all of whom are car mad. Anyway you could smell the testosterone in the air as helpful comments were made in English, French and Arabic throughout the exercise! Surprisingly quickly we were on our way again.

At sunrise, the next morning, we got up to take some photos. Our neighbours the previous night were a group of Qataris who had been camping back on the sand dunes a bit of a way down the water from us. They sounded like they were having fun, talking and laughing around a campfire - you could have been camping anywhere in Canada! Anyway, the next morning, the tide was out and our neighbours had driven right to the edge of the water and were busy fishing. They kindly gave us a fish! although the cook at our camp didn't think too much of the type of fish! it somehow never got cooked! One of the easiest ways to get around is to drive right by the water as it is firm sand. On our walk, we were passed by several cars! A little bit unnerving!

It was well worth getting up early for this view.

Back to the camp for coffee and tea, kindly served by the "tea boy" who had been quite the dancer the night before! I still have a hard time getting used to being able to have couches and comfy chairs and tables which are left outside. The roof is not for the risk of rain, but for shade! So we got our plates of delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs with spices, some kind of sweet noodle with fool (mashed up beans) on top, juices, muffins etc. and bought them back to our comfy chairs to sit on. Then back into the cars again for a more direct route back to our awaiting cars. Sad to think that this will likely be our last trip to the sand dunes.

Thursday afternoon, we went with a group of people from the company for my second and Derek's third trip to the desert. While they were letting the air out of the tires of the ubiquitous Land Cruisers that we were driven in - oh I forgot to put that picture in, I will put it in the next one. Anyway, several people rode on camels to while away the time.

This time we stayed overnight and this was our accommodation. We just had a sleeping bag to put on top of the cushions, with carpets to walk on - quite cosy! We just slept on top of the sleeping bags and had a light sheet on top as it was still pretty warm and humid. The tent is only closed on three sides, with the third, long side, open. We were fed a typical bedouin meal, which was basically meat, rice and pulses of different kinds. All with lots of tasty spices.

This was another option of a place to sleep. But I just wanted to show how much carpets are used here. This beautiful carpet was just laid on the sand and was in fact covered in sand from people walking on it. They did ask us to remove our footwear before entering the tents, but you have sand all over you and of course it gets everywhere.

After dinner, we were entertained by our drivers, one got out his electric organ or whatever it is called and played obviously well known Arabic songs. They were all singing and clapping along to them. Before long, everyone was up dancing, our drivers included. They were very hospitable and friendly. Derek played a lengthy game of volleyball as well, so we were definitely ready for bed around midnight and too tired to care if there were snakes or scorpions - which there weren't. To be continued.

A few more textile related pictures. You see textiles in the most unusual places. While we were waiting for the air to be let out of our tires last Thursday evening, before our trip to the desert, we were invited to ride on some camels. The camels are so beautifully decorated, both with crocheted "snoods" for their noses -

And the array of tassels they wear.

Here are a couple more pictures of our shopping trip. More combinations of fabrics to choose from. I am not sure exactly who these are aimed at. There are very few Indian or Pakistani women here, only the men come here to work and I have never seen Indian men shopping here. The Qatari women supposedly wear very elaborate clothing under their abayas, and I see many Qatari women shopping in the souq, buying really gorgeous painted silks and sequined fabrics.

A never ending supply of ideas! You can see, the one I chose was middle row, furthest to the left. I will do a blog next on our trip to the desert, it was quite different going with a large group of people, and this time we stayed overnight.

Well, it is official - our end date has been moved up and we will be coming home after our vacation in Egypt and Jordan, around the middle of November. We are quite sad about it, as we were looking forward to doing a lot more exploring in the cooler temperatures. However, it has been a great experience and if we were offered the chance to come here again, we would jump at the chance. Anyway, I am realizing that there are lots of things I have not yet put on the blog and also we had another trip to the desert last weekend, so will try and add to the blog each day this week to try and catch up. We will be doing a lot of catch up ourselves with all the things we had put off seeing until the weather was cooler, now we will have to get busy to fit them all in.

Anyway, these next pictures are for my textile friends. I thought the fabric souq was going to be terribly exotic, but in fact there are several large department store type buildings all in the same area. Each one containing masses of little tiny stores, with a few larger ones. Over time, you get to have favourites. But each store has a real mixture of dated fabrics, silks, japanese cotton which is very thin and fabrics of unknown origin and fibre content, well known cotton brands such as Liberty and Hoffman, a real mixture. Often the men (only men) selling the fabric dont really know the difference between cotton and polycotton, or silk and "silky" and short of burning a piece on the spot - I can't tell the difference often.

This is a picture of Souq al Dira which is the more expensive fabrics. The ceiling is quite exotic! with its chandelier and it is all air conditioned with a fountain in the middle of it, although it doesn't seem to be functioning!

This is what the little shops look like, and there are masses of them. Of course you never pay the listed price, but have to bargain. Sometimes you are offered tea and the local ladies all sit on chairs and have the fabric bought to them and the fellows show them yards of fabric with a flourish! I usually just poke around to find what I want. The cheapest I have bought was around 4 QAR which is about $1.30 and it was definitely a polycotton, but just right for what I was looking for. The silk goes up to about 35-40 QAR, around $10 - 15 for heavy charmeuse and around 44QAR for fine silk dupioni at the Bombay Silk Company which is in another area of town. It doesn't seem to matter what I pay in the same store for the same thing either, I think it has to do with how much they have sold so far that day and how hard they or I want to bargain. Who knows!

The fabrics can be quite elaborately decorated with lots of beading and stitching. These are more like 100 QAR and up. For reference it is around 3QAR to 1 C$. I am told there are some you can pay hundreds of dollars for, but they are still cheaper than you would pay in the west. A friend and I went shopping yesterday and she introduced me to her tailor, so he is making a few things for me before I leave. It was fun to go shopping with her as she is much better at bargaining than I am.

I normally shop in souq Asiery, "the escalator souq". This was the first souq to have an escalator in it as opposed to the usual stairs. The stores on the top floor have better prices than those on the ground floor as their rents are cheaper. So I usually stick to the upstairs ones for cotton, and downstairs for silk. This is some fabric I bought yesterday to be made into an outfit. It actually is a set for Indian ladies, with an elaborate piece of fabric for the long tunic top, some more floaty stuff for the pants and this thin organza type for the sheila? the shawl. The whole set came to 120 QAR which was probably pricey, but I loved the pattern and hope the tailor can make it into a nice outfit for me. It is probably a total of about 6 or more metres of fabric. I have to start thinking of how to pack all this stuff, so had better slow down on the shopping! I did do some dyeing last week with procyon dyes on some silk. It worked very well, but a bit nerve racking trying to do it in an appartment with white tile floors, I was paranoid about drips! So think I will now wait until I get home to do more. I bought some silk dyes to paint on from a local shop, so will probably use those up before coming home, I think they are more like setacolour as you iron them to set the colour. I will add a few more in the next blog.

It appears that our tire is beyond repair and we need another one, so while waiting for this to be negotiated, we thought we would explore closer to home, in fact, on the edge of Doha. We went looking for Borj Barzan Fort in the Umm Slal Mohammed area. Barzan means "high place" in Arabic. These were lookout points in the late 19 century to protect a precious water reservoir. This is not very old, and it has been repaired quite a bit by the looks of it. Anyway, it has paths all around it and is well maintained. You can walk up the steps and look out from the top, so we spent a pleasant time until sunset.

The ubiquitous crescent moon on the top of the tower now has a great deal more significance to us after experiencing the anxious awaiting of the crescent moon for the start of Eid. It is very different for us not to know the exact date of a holiday and, if you have been fasting all day for the past month, it must be excrutiating having to wait one or two more days until the moon has been sighted by the official committee. I noticed in the shopping centre yesterday, the abeyas are much more colourful now, especially the ones the younger girls are wearing. Instead of the usual decorations of silver or black, or occasionally gold, I noticed lots of colourful trims. I will be interested to see how long the period of celebration is for, and when they return to the usual colours. A friend had told me to be particularly careful to wear conservative clothes during the Holy month of Ramadan as she had actually been told off by the clothes police in the mall saying she was not appropriately dessed. I am not sure whether there really are "clothes police" or just someone who was offended.

On the way back we went to a new grocery shop that we had driven by every time on our way out of town. Yesterday we had the time to stop and take a look. They certainly had gone "over the top" for their Eid decorations. I actually took a small video clip of this as it moves continuously!

Now this is what I call decorating with lights! The actual store was really nice and had great ethnic vegetables and in fact was nicer I think than our regular store. I thought this was a cheaper store, and yet they carried the "dutchy" line of products attributed to Prince Charles, as well as a huge cheese selection and quite a lot of different products from our usual store, things that I thought I couldn't get in Doha. This was definitely a "find". The night before we had finally tried out "Turkey Central" which is basically a fast food restaurant but with really tasty middle eastern food. You can eat in, rather cafeteria style, but we opted for schwarmas to take out with some tabouleh and babaganouch. The fellow making them was a going concern, he churned out a huge quantity of them in the time we waited for our order to be filled. A really good cheap meal - a far cry from the fancy french restaurant I had been hoping to be taken to at La Cigalle - oh well, another time. A few doors down from Turkey Central, we went to Patisserie Swiss, which we have seen all over town and is in fact a Lebanese bakery and nothing swiss about it. But they have a huge selection of pastries with pistachio nuts, dates etc. so we picked up a selection to try for desert. There always seems to be something new to find and experience. One more day, then it is Friday and hopefully we will have a new tire so we can go further afield.