A few more pictures of what I have seen around Doha. This is FANAR which is the Islamic cultural centre. The building represents a light house and is intended to be a beacon of light for muslims. This is where we went the other day and saw the mosqe. Apparently you can walk up to the top of the building if you take a tour, which I will do sometime before we leave. This is where they teach arabic classes and also cultural classes.

On the Corniche is this giant oyster and pearl which is a lovely refreshing fountain. There is a quite large cascade of water on the opposite side, but I also wanted to show the back of the shell as well. It is quite large. The pearl is about eye level. Doha of course was originally a pearl fishing village. Around the time that Japanese pearls were flooding the market, oil was found which was very fortunate. The pearl is found in a lot of designs around town and there are some lovely flower containers also in the shape of an oyster with flowers cascading from them.

Here is another piece of graffiti on the wall of the corniche. Very artistic.

All around the city are large sculptures relating to the local heritage. This is a coffee pot and very large. There are similar sorts of sculptures in the middle of all the roundabouts, although this one was on the corniche.

On a different note - I noticed on the Google webpage today they had some morse code because today is Samuel Morse's birthday. Which reminded me of Banff ; while we were there in March, they held the finals of the competition for young composers. At the final performance, where the winners were chosen, the actual winner, Andrew Staniland, talked about his composition and the ideas that influenced him. The pieces were to be based on Evolution in recognition of the anniversary of Darwin and he had a recurring theme throughout his piece, taken over by different instruments at different times, but it was based on the percussion of the morse code of Darwin's name. Anyway, the Google page took me back to our wonderful time in Banff, and to that concert in particular.