Sunday 22nd June 14

We woke up again at stupid o'clock. We really got to see the view from our room when we woke up. It looked straight across the harbour to the skyline of Doha. We only had a full day in Qatar so decided to head out on the Doha sightseeing bus to get to see most of the famous sites.

Qatar is a relatively new city which hosts some of the worlds most beautiful buildings. Half the tour was looking at hotels lol, we stopped at the Marriot, Sheraton, Intercontinental and Hilton. The National museum was still under construction. We wandered around the famous Souq Waqif which translates to standing market. It was pretty quiet during the day so headed out to see more sites. The hop on bus took us to the Sharq Village and past the fishing boats which were very impressive in there design and craft. The Corniche and City centre gave us a great view of the skyline and modern verses old Qatar architecture. Stevie wanted to look around the Museum of Islamic art which boasts a educational history of art and its influences. The museum was designed by the same guy that built the louvre in France.

We stopped of at Katara, here stood two stone towers with hundreds of holes. This was to encourage pigeons to the area. It was pretty much a glorified bird house and it worked. There were hundreds of them here.

The Pearl was an artificial peninsula in the shape of a Pearl to honour the history of pearl diving there. It now offers lavish apartments and shopping. Although the largest shopping centre was Salam Hall in the city centre. The tour back took us past Lagoona/ Zig Towers, more of Qatar's fancy modern buildings. Rumailah Park was our final stop before heading back. We both strolled around the Souq Waqif after the tour. It was a lot busier and really come to life in the night. Spice, fabric and food stalls lined the streets and labrythed though the Waqif. This time we spend ages walking around, partly getting lost and part Stevie wanting to look at every item. We tried some traditional sweet cold tea before ending up in a Morrocan restaurant. We finished the night eating and chilling on the restaurant terrace..

Monday 23rd June 14

We had a bit of a lay-in today as we were flying out to Turkey this afternoon. We enjoyed the lavish suite apartment as we were soon to be dorming it in hostels. We tried to repack our bags again to try and make it more practical. As you know the further you travel you end up dumping stuff off. I got rid of a few things before we headed out for breakfast. We couldn't be bothered to venture far so had a coffee and cake in the Souq Waqif.

We checked out our hotel and managed to flag a taxi down straight away which was a blessing seen as the high was in its high 30s..

At the airport our premium economy was no more as we cramped into the economy section. Luckily the flight was only 4 hours long. I spent most of the time looking out the window as we were flying in the day and over Iran and Iraq, it pretty much was just desert.

We landed at 6pm and it was still light out so we decided to change up some cash as venture to find our hotel on the train. Unfortunely the bureau de change did not change up Qatar or NZD, luckily we found a ATM. Saved. The next hurdle was getting the ₺100kr into change for the train. After a long search we managed to get change. The next hurdle was trying to find our hostel in a city, language and trasport we didnt't understand. Train and Tram and a couple of hours later we managed to find the area were the hostel is located. All we had to do know was find the hostel, easy right. Nope. No one had heard of the place or the street. Luckily a guy googled it on his phone and gave us directions. In turkish, but we could should it to randoms has we got closer. After walking what felt like a mile with our heavy bags, in the busy streets we manged to find it down a tiny side street... Relief!!

The beauty of our suite in Qatar was now replaced with a 4 bed doom room about 4m x 2m.. The reality sunk in that our glory days were over.... We were so tired, we went straight to bed.