Our original booking had us leaving Kathmandu at 2am, with a 4 hour layover in Doha before continuing on to the US. Not ideal, but workable. A few months later we received an email that our flight from Kathmandu was now leaving at 6pm, meaning we would have a 12 hour layover. We’ve done that before in Doha, and spending the night in the airport is not very comfortable. After reviewing our options we decided to take an earlier morning flight out, leave the airport (like in 2019), explore some different parts of the city and sleep in an actual hotel.
Qatar Airways has an arrivals lounge with an immigration facility, so we opted to use that. We were surprised that the country now has a fee for visa on arrival ($21) and no longer allows Uber pickups. Oops. Instead we tried out the metro, where the ticket was good all day until midnight for the low price of 6 riyals, about $1.50. We took the metro from the airport to the conference center, then grabbed a cheap Uber ride for the remaining journey to the W hotel.
After leaving our bags at the hotel we walked to the City Center Mall. It was hot (near 100F) but very breezy and not humid, so it wasn’t too bad as long as we stayed in the shade. The interior of the mall was blissfully cool.
Our primary destination was the Carrefour which was absolutely massive, it was actually hard to see one end from the other. We wandered the aisles for a while, surprised by the relative inexpensive costs on many items, and found some spices (black cardamom and dry lemon powder) that are harder to find back home.
Next we took the metro out to the Katara Art Center. As with many developments in the region it feels a bit forced, but there was some interesting items including sculptures, mosques, and an amphitheatre to explore.
Later that evening we took a post-dinner walk outside to photograph the lit-up buildings at night too.
Stay: W Doha – since Doha built so many hotels for the World Cup a few years ago, there are lots of decently priced higher-end hotels. Our standard room was quite stylish and came with a view of the towers across the road, plus the pool below us.
The bed was super comfortable, and it was very quiet at night. Unsurprisingly, the AC was blasting – we had to dial it back a little to feel comfortable.
At check-in we received two vouchers for drinks at the wahm bar. Quite swanky, we enjoyed our drinks, a passion fruit concoction for me (nicely tart) and black and gold for Leandra (Johnny Walker black, marmalade, etc). Our server was very nice and personable.
After considering several options, we decided on dinner at La Spiga, an well-rated Italian place in our hotel. I paired a French rosé with the pappardelle in cream sauce, while Leandra had the sangiovese and an asparagus risotto. We were rather full from dinner, but our server dropped off a free raspberry granita as well (fantastically tart) and I couldn’t stop eating it. A very pleasant experience with great service and a nice atmosphere, including a piano player part of the time.
Our room came with breakfast, and given our early start they allowed us to pre-order with delivery to the room at 5:30am. It was so much more than we expected!
The scrambled eggs were good, as was the granola. Leandra was sad to leave some smoked salmon behind, but she ate half of the generous portion.
We managed to get some shots of the National Museum on the way back to the airport. Will need to make that a priority on a future trip.
