Here we go, our first “rest day” while in Qatar. Rest for the players and from the stadium, but definitely not in the sense of us staying in and relaxing all day. No, no, that would be too easy. Instead we get up and head down to the Souq Waqif metro station. The place looks quite different this early in the day, mostly because there aren’t many people here! They must all still be in bed from last night. As soon as we exit the metro station we come out to this, the Qatar Islamic Cultural Centre. It is in the style/a replica of the Great Mosque in Samarra, Iraq. From yesterday’s visit to the Grand Mosque, we also learned that it is one of two mosques in Doha that do their prayers in English. Not sure if all of them or just certain ones, but that’s what we were told. And in the foreground of the mosque you can see all of the World Cup things that are all over Doha. Signs and fences all trying to direct the millions of fans that were supposed to come during the entire World Cup event.

Just a bit beyond the Qatar Islamic Cultural Centre (about 10 steps away from where the first picture was taken) is the Souq Waqif Mosque (we think technically the Western one). At night the open space that you can see below our vantage point is absolutely paaaaacked with people, as we would soon find out.

Then it was off to the Corniche because today we had a specific goal in mind. The goal is what you can see on the right hand side of the panoramic view below.

Today’s goal is to go and visit the Museum of Islamic Art. From Souq Waqif metro station it was a quick walk over to it. The show begins outside with a beautiful, modern building. Outside of this shot there is an entire driveway that comes up the hill towards the museum lined on either side by palm trees and a fountain at the top. It seems like Doha/Qatar know how to do a museum.

We entered through the bottom parking lot, not sure if this is normal or just temporary as they expected many more visitors than normal during the World Cup. Online it suggested we buy our tickets in advance, but since we’re bad at planning we decided to just show up and hope for the best. Not a problem at all. Got there, paid our 99 QAR (~30 USD), and we were on our way in. A special note here, during the World Cup most museums are free, but not this one nor the National Museum of Qatar. However, there exists a One Pass system in Qatar for museums and exhibits. Typically it is more expensive, but since those two are the only museums that currently require payment they have dropped the price to 99 QAR. Perfect, so with the purchase of our ticket today we can get into the National Museum of Qatar for free within 5 days. Not bad.

Another curiosity (that we loved) was the fact that the museum(s) are free for GCC residents. That means that anyone presenting a resident card, and not just citizenship, from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, or Oman get in for free. We love that they can enjoy this sort of thing for free. A great move that we would love to see elsewhere.

So, immediately upon entering you are just floored with the space. At least we were. The inside of the museum is just as beautiful as the outside. And it is hard to convey just how big this space really is.

And then we started the exhibits. The first one was about Baghdad, Iraq. This is what we were referring to yesterday when we said that it seemed like Qatar is not only interested in teaching visitors about Qatar, but the wider Middle East/Arab world. And what better way than to have a special exhibit about Baghdad, a city that many of the World Cup-going fans will have heard of but likely not visited as it has been rather well-known for the wrong reasons with all of the wars in recent history.

Instead this exhibit really demonstrated the history of Baghdad and what it was like before the recent conflicts. If we remember correctly, at one point it called it a “love letter to Baghdad”. They put the city and the country into a context beyond the headlines that I am sure most readers will come up with when asked to imagine Baghdad and Iraq. They showed from ancient history to the modern times with great exhibits for every time period. One of our favourites were these pictures by Latif Al Ani, who is supposed to be Iraq’s most well-known photographer. His work was between the 1950s and the 1970s, capturing moments in the modernization of Iraq before the decades of war. (Pretty much what the little explanation said beside these pictures).

They also showed the importance of Iraq in a historical context beyond the Middle Eastern borders as shown in this map. The map is from 1570 by Abraham Ortellus, the creator of the first modern atlas. This map shows the Turkish empire with the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Basra highlighted in it.

Beyond the exhibit on Baghdad they had many other collections, some of our favourites were of rare and old books. Below was a room dedicated to different copies of the Quran, with some very old and very important Qurans on display. And notice the stools so that you can sit and actually read the pages/bifolios on display.

And again, we sound like a broken record, we think that they did a great job in positioning the contributions of the Islamic/Arab world to the wider world. As some of our readers may know, Islamic scholars were some of the greatest of all time and made huge contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the world. This included medicine, science, maths, and more, and some of these original texts were on display here, which we found very cool. Even better if we could have read what some of the pages actually said, hehe. As our one example (out of many) we will show these pages from the Two Treatises on Astronomy. This specific book is a copy of Abu al-Fazi Hubaysh bin Ibrahim al-Munajjim al-Tiflisi’s work from the 15th century CE (9th Century AH). Which presents a perfect time to bring up something we learned about after seeing many centuries listed as “AH”. We had no idea what it was, but with some internet searches we learned that it means Anno Hegirae which is when the Prophet Mohammed took a journey from Mecca to Medina, starting the Islamic calendar in the Gregorian year (the calendar we think the vast majority of our readers follow) of 622 CE.

There were so many exhibits, and we took so many pictures. SO many. Too many to include them all here, but we may do a photo dump over on our Instagram account in due time. Some of our highlights include this delicate art form:

Titled ‘Calligraphic composition in thuluth script on leaf’. Just beautiful. And of course we will pass on what we learned to you. This form of art comes from the Ottoman Empire around the late 1800s, early 1900s and it was done by first creating the calligraphy on the leaf using wax, dipping it all into an alkaline solution to dissolve everything away other than the wax and the veins/structure of the leaf, and then gold leaf was applied directly onto the calligraphy to give it this finished look. We can’t remember ever seeing anything like it before.

And the final image we will leave you with is this massive room. This room is meant to show typical/traditional houses in Damascus. We will say it again, we were really impressed at what Qatar was trying to do with these sorts of exhibits. Again, for many of our readers the images that probably come to mind when you think of Syria are of the years of war, but Qatar is clearly trying to teach the World Cup visitors (and others) about the different aspects of this region beyond these recent conflicts. We really enjoyed that sort of touch. Almost as if allowing these regions to speak for themselves, almost.

And with that, and after a few hours within the museum, we were done. A last look from the inside, and then we were off.

We left the museum, but not its grounds as it has a park to explore as well, the MIA Park. The park is nice and has a walkway that is almost a full circle out to a tip. Maybe it is meant to be the crescent moon, which would make sense for the Museum of Islamic Art… but we have no way of confirming this. Just a theory.

It is not too long of a walk way, and you can choose which path you take to reach the end. We chose this one as it seemed the nicest. Beside us is a more “sidewalk” type thing where little golf carts zoom back and forth in case you don’t feel like walking to the end and back. Did we not say that Qatar loves its shuttles? And, of course, it’s free. Just to help you out a bit. At the end there are little cafes and seating areas for you to enjoy the view. There was also a musician playing when we were there. As with many things we see on this trip, we’re not sure what is “normal” and what is “special” just during the World Cup. Either way, we enjoyed the walk and view.

Then it was back to the museum entrance, and then we continued along the Corniche, in a direction we had not gone yet, further south. The entire Corniche is just a football festival for the World Cup, but, the Brasil house was definitely our favourite sight. Unfortunately for us, they only gave out a little coffee on the hour every hour. We never arrived on time to receive it or to receive the free reusable Brasil-branded bag that went with it. And we arrived at 8:05 pm one of the days we walked past it.

And then there was the Great Britain house as well. Not entirely sure what they were giving out.. but we stopped by nonetheless.

And then we saw him. At the end of the Corniche was the one player we were still missing from the other night. Lionel Messi. I’m hoping that no one reading this needed us to say his name… But we have finished our collection of legends. Who knows if he will be crowned champion after Sunday’s final. Hopefully!

At the end of the Corniche area was this area with many flags, not entirely sure what the criteria is for having your country’s flag placed here… but we did notice that not all of the flags of the world are present. But there must be over one hundred!

Then we walked back along the Corniche and did some of the World Cup activities like seeing how hard you can shoot the football and listening to some concerts, but eventually we made it all the way back to Souq Waqif. Not sure if it is, but it definitely seems like the heart of Doha, at least where the World Cup is concerned. It feels like we always end up back at the Souq.

But we weren’t there to stay, we walked right by to find this monument we had seen online. Just to take a quick look at it. Crazy big. The Sword Gate monument by Grand Hamad Plaza. Not much to say about it, we just went to take a look.

Theeeen it was back to the Souq Waqif. But we went to another part of it tonight. So follow us as we go through two sections of the Souq that barely had anyone in them. The first is what we eluded to yesterday where we mentioned that the Souq was a bit larger than what we had shown in last night’s picture. That’s because there is a newer addition to the Souq, the Gold and Carpets Souq. It really didn’t have many people in it.

And then we went back into Souq Waqif proper, but to another section. In this section they deal with large, “important” animals to Qatari culture. We say “important” because we had already walked through a section of the Souq that had small pets like parrots, chickens, etc. in it, but this section is different.

This section was for falcons. Falcons are very important to Qatari culture as an animal that was used for hunting. In this section of the Souq you could buy falcons on display as well as all of the accessories needed for this endeavour like the little hoods and other implements.It was something we had never seen before and there were many stores like this one.

And then the next group of animals were…

… Arabian horses. These horses are known throughout the world as some of the best horses around. We believe that these horses are also for sale, but we could be wrong and these may just be their stables. Not entirely sure. We’re just conveying what we see.

And unknown to us at the time, we were missing one other animal in the Souq, but we will get to that in another entry.

Just a little further on, we were back on the Corniche. And just in time! We saw the fireworks and drone show that happens every night at 9 pm to give everyone the Welcome to Qatar experience! It was awesome. Unfortunately for our readers, we took a video of it instead of taking pictures. So we don’t have anything to show for it here, but eventually over on YouTube you will hopefully be able to see it!

Alright, this time we’re determined to get into FanFest. We have to at least go to it once, right? It’s a must with the World Cup experience! So, off we went along the Corniche towards FanFest.

And this time we are happy to report that we both made it in!

Inside there was a lot going on. The sponsors all had their own booths and they were giving away free things to anyone that did some sort of participation at their booths. Some of the lines were massive. There was of course concession stands where you could buy food and drinks, including alcohol (weirdly enough since the stadiums are alcohol free), and the FIFA Store where you can buy officially licensed World Cup things. Most of it was picked dry. But the highlights were this booth where randoms could play football against each other in a sort of cage match with spectators, the stage where different performers were going from open to close, and then all of the picture opportunities with the World Cup.

Unfortunately, the FIFA Museum seemed closed when we were there. We thought it was meant to be open whenever FanFest was open, but it sure didn’t seem that way. Next time. Without a game on there wasn’t too much more to see at FanFest, so it was off to our Caravan City again after what seemed like a very long day.

Back at our Caravan City we ate at one of the Turkish restaurants that were set up for us. Quite late for such a big meal, but we had to replenish our energy to be able to repeat it all over again tomorrow. Good night from Doha!