24 Hours in Doha

While Margaret was enjoying the Polar Vortex in the US, I decided to go on a solo mission to Doha. Doha is not a top tourist destination (not until the World Cup arrives in 2022, at least); the trip was largely prompted by a desire to see the controversial Damien Hirst exhibit and the Islamic Art Museum.

I arrived on a Friday evening, and made my way to Souq Waqif for a bite and a taste of Qatari nightlife. Locals call Souq Waqif the "new souq" -- it was built about two years ago next to the "old souq" -- but it has a traditional feel.  Most of the shops have hand-made crafts, all the buildings are one or two stories, and like all places in the Middle East, it is impossible not to lose one's bearings.  

When I arrived, the souq was bustling and Qatari women were singing as they made their way through the alleys.

 There was a row of restaurants, a mix of fancy sit down places and shisha cafes.

I chose the most street food-y place I could find. It had a menu in Arabic, accompanied by the transliteration of the menu into Latin characters, which didn't help a whole lot.  But thankfully, one can order by going back into the kitchen, where there are big toughs of food, and pointing.  I ended up with chicken curry and a savory lamb bread pudding.  Tasty!  I ate with a British man who had moved to Doha a week ago to work on the new zoo.  He'd already had some interesting experiences...

The next day, after a rainy run along Doha's Al Corniche, I went to the Islamic Art Museum.  The museum is at least as famous for the building (designed by I.M. Pei) as for its collection.  Both are spectacular.  The museum's exterior is particularly beautiful when lit up at night.

The inside is spacious without being cavernous.

There was a room full of beautiful Korans.  The doors on the right are covered in Arabic.

And they love their falcons just as much in Qatar as they do in the UAE.

Final stop was the Damien Hirst exhibit, conveniently next door to the Islamic Art Museum.  As expected, most of the art was very, very weird, some of it was stomach turning, but some things were exquisite.  My favorite were "butterfly paintings" meant to look like stained glass that were actually made out of butterfly wings.

The Falcon Hospital (and a very mezze Thanksgiving)

Falcons are a big deal in Abu Dhabi. For the most part, we've been content with the cheesy paintings of falcons displayed prominently in fancy hotels and available for sale in every souq. For the last month or two, there has been a "Birds of Prey" exhibit in our building's atrium. The exhibit lies between us and our main source of sustenance (long live Waitrose!), and on several shopping trips, we've run into some real falcons, brought by their owners to the exhibit of representations of falcons. Deep.

That was one of our first tastes of real falcons, but - now that we've been to the falcon hospital - we are old hands.



The falcon hospital is located off the island, on a somewhat harrowing stretch of E11, the road to Dubai. We took Nick's dad and sister on the two-hour tour to begin our Thanksgiving festivities.




Though we learned a lot of falcon-facts (for example, the females are larger and better at hunting, so most people own female falcons), what we'll remember is the room FULL of falcons, where falcons wait pre- and post-op. At tens of thousands of dollars a head, falcons are expensive (the most expensive we saw was beautiful, with tiny black spots on a lovely white background, worth about fifty thousand dollars). So the room was full of some very precious merchandise.

Welcome to the world's poshest falcon waiting room.

Each falcon has a fancy top hat on to keep it calm. Some falcons were not so easily swayed, however. This fellow flapped his wings for most of our visit.



Others were more easily convinced (and more beautiful - below is our favorite falcon).



Operations were going on throughout our visit. Anesthetized birds are a sad sight to behold: their necks droop impossibly, so impossibly that they look broken. Operations can be simple; for example, birds in captivity need their talons trimmed so that they don't hurt themselves with over-long claws, and their feathers need yearly help, too.

But falcon treatment can also be more complex - we saw a real, hard-core operating theater (no birds therein) and a post-mortem assessment room.



After a few minutes of stunned watching and listening, as the doctors (?) explained the basics of falcon care, we each held a falcon....

And Margaret got to feed one. He snapped through a whole baby quail in about thirty seconds, bones and all!

And we went home to our mezze Thanksgiving....

....where there was kibbeh and pumpkin oumali (the aptly named queen of puddings)....



...but no birds to be seen, save for this little guy, a Kazhia Kolb original...he flew in specially from the US for the occasion!