So about a month ago we went on a road trip! It was the first one for me. (Matt tends to drive to Bahrain when I'm not around but thus far I've never been.) We decided to go to Qatar, a country that borders Saudi. It takes a couple of hours longer than the trip to Bahrain, but according to Matt it is well worth the extra time.
Total distance to Doha was about 489 KM from where we started. (Doha is about an hour away from the Saudi/ Qatar border.)
One would tend to think that that drive would look mostly like this, and parts of it did.
But for the most part, it looked mostly like this. With gas stations about every 20 miles or so.
And I still find it a little crazy to see camels all over the place just walking along the side of the road.
This was looking down on the lobby, ahem, I mean "living room" (eye roll.)
Here is Matt drinking a Moroccan tea. I didn't like it because it had way too much honey for my taste. Truthfully, Matt didn't like it either but he did drink most of it. I think it was mostly to be polite since he had asked the waiter to make a drink suggestion. Everything else though was really good.
One would think that a road trip would be a lot less hassle than dealing with airports and rent a cars and such but when you are living in Saudi that is definitely not the case! Apparently, if you are going to take a car into another country there are all kinds of paperworks that need to be filed. Even though Matt started the paperworks more than a week in advance all kinds of things came up. First, it turned out that Matt's drivers license was expired. That took three trips to various offices to get renewed. Next, we found out the car registration was expired. After several days, we realized that this was not going to get finished in time. Matt's boss offered to let us take his car but then we had ran out of time to get the travel paperwork in time. Luckily, we were able to move our hotel reservation (which had been paid in full) over to the next week. So we tried again.
After another week, the registration still wasn't finished so we started the paperwork on the other car. The paperwork finally came through on the morning that we were supposed to leave. We then found out that our travel visas had expired!! After much rushing around, we got a one time exit visa and we were off only a couple of hours later than we had planned. We didn't want to get out too late because we hadn't been there before and the desert tends to get a bit disorienting. However, we did finally buy a Garmin which helped tremendously! I can't believe we haven't bought one up to this point. Especially considering how easily we get lost.
So off we went!
I guess it's kind of like seeing horses out here.
Eventually, we made it to here:
This is the border crossing between Saudi and Qatar. There are all kinds of stops and we had to keep giving our paperworks to various people. Then we drove about 8 kilometers to the Qatar side where we had to get out and purchase a visiting visa and car insurance. The whole border crossing took about 40 minutes.
Once in Doha, we stayed in the W hotel. It was very nice but a tad annoying with all their jargon.
We also went to the Souk Waqif where we bought nothing but had a very nice lunch at a Moroccan restaurant.
Afterwards we walked around a bit but there was nothing that either of us just had to have. Later we drove down to the Corniche.
The difference in the humidity by the water was tremendous. It took about 5 minutes before my hair frizzed up and my jeans started sticking to me.
Still, we did go back later in the evening for a run. 100 degrees and really humid, but I still managed to run a ten minute mile pace for 4 miles. Lately while running in Saudi I haven't been able to run any more than a 12 minute mile when outside so I was quite pleased with that.
Another day we also went to go see the Pearl.
This is a model of the Pearl. I couldn't fit it all in the picture so here is a super short video.
It's not finished yet so there are still spots you can buy for your own private island estate.
And saving the best part for last, I got to see Tiffany! Doesn't she look fabulous! I can't believe she just had a baby 4 months ago. (Well, I guess 5 now since I have taken so long to post this!) The baby is super cute! Miss you Tiffany!!
Eventually we had to leave and make the long drive back.
Apparently Qataris really hate trumpets ;)
It was a bit quicker to get through customs on the way back into Saudi but the drive back seemed a lot longer. Also, it was really windy and so it was very dusty as well. All in all, a really nice long weekend.
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