Doha, Qatar!

After an hour flight we arrived in Doha, Qatar Wednesday morning. We finally got to see Ariane's apartment and the city she's been living in for the past six months. Ariane's friends arranged an SUV trip to the dessert for us, complete with cook-out, fire, and dune bashing. Dune bashing involves taking an SUV at full speed up and down the dunes - it's like a real-life roller coaster ride. It was thrilling and scary at the same time.


The desert is freezing at night!
Thursday Kelly and I walked along the Cornish, the road that boarders the Gulf. It was a 4.5 mile walk total, which felt great as we haven't been able to walk that much so far. In Ariane's words, the motto here seems to be, "we don't even walk across the street, we drive!" The Cornish is beautiful and has a very wide promenade that was full of Qataris enjoying the warm afternoon weather.
There are some beautiful new buildings in Doha:


It seems like for every one building completed there are two more being put up. Cranes dot the skyline:
I am not sure what this street sign says, but clearly it's had enough!



Doha is the pearl of the gulf:


We met Ariane at the old souk after she was done with work and spent the evening browsing spices, nuts, pashminas, perfume and more. We also each ordered necklaces that have our name in Arabic to be custom made.


For dinner, Kelly & Ariane stopped at a shwarma place to get some Arab fast food. Shwarma is basically like a gyro - lamb or chicken meat wrapped in a pita with sauce and onions. It was cheap and supposedly delicious!

Unfortunately for Kelly, it seems that she may have gotten a side of salmonella with her shwarma. She spent all last night doubled up over the toilet with an awful case of food poisoning. Today she spent most of the day in bed and wasn't able to keep even water down until almost lunch time. Kelly still has no appetite, but her energy is returning and I think she'll be back to full health tomorrow.

Also, I have a few extra pictures of our living arrangements in Dubai. Eight people in one bedroom with three twin beds!


Tomorrow morning we leave for the last leg of our journey - Egypt!! We fly into Alexandria and from there Aswan, Luxor, and Cairo!