Doha residents relax on the Corniche as the weather finally starts to warm up.
Doha’s much vaunted Corniche is indeed easily the most
attractive part of this capital city, and where I take all my guests when they first arrive in this city – normally on the way home from the airport. In the day, you can admire the incredible colour of the Doha’s bay, in the evening you can appreciate one of the region’s superb sunsets, and at night the city lights up in an array of colours.
The Sheraton at the far end of the Corniche is one of Doha’s most iconic buildings. Until recently, this pyramid shaped hotel stood alone; now it is beginning to be overshadowed by the buildings shooting up all round it. Next it is Sheraton park. In addition to a childen’s play area, and cool green lawns where you can sit back under the shade of palm trees, free wireless internet is now available here.
This is where Doha’s Corniche starts. There’s a large parking area too – be careful to stick to the marked area or you may return to find a parking ticket slapped on your vehicle.
This is a popular posing place for Doha’s ultra cool motorcycle crowd – you can sometimes admire the not-very-Muslim angel of death painted on one bike. These lads are part of the macho risk culture that exists among some of the younger Qataris here, and often leave the parking area with an impressive wheely.
There’s a popular little cafe here, where you can buy snacks, ice-cream and drinks. Unfortunately, it’s a little shabby, and doesn’t match up to the rest of the Corniche. It also serves awful coffee - but its range of fresh juices are great. (Tip – you have to tell them if you don’t want sugar in your juice.) In the car park opposite, drivers too lazy to walk the sparse few metres to the cafe sprawl in their land cruisers and blare their horns until waiters attend to them.
Tourist dhows will take you on a trip of the bay from here and several other locations scattered along the Corniche. They used to take you to Palm Tree island, until the resort was mysteriously demolished just before the Asian Games. The jetty here is a great place to watch small fish swarming in the clear water, and there’s also a tiny little beach where you can paddle (no swimming allowed, I’m afraid).
Further on along the Corniche you’ll come to Bal Hambar
restaurant. This place sits right on the sea, so you can sit on cushions and enjoy traditional Arabic food as the waves lap along the wall below.
Walk on until the next roundabout, and on the other side of the road, you’ll come to Al Bidda park - also called Rumeila Park. This is a real oasis, frequented by numerous species of birds who are drawn by the grass, trees and water gardens. At one end of the park is a children’s play area, where you can also buy refreshments. Beyond that is Doha’s heritage village, which showcases traditional Qatari life during festivals and special events.
Continue along Doha’s Corniche, and you’ll pass an imposing concrete structure – this is the Emir’s palace, though it is used more for receptions than as a place of residence.
Nearly opposite is the parking place for a large number of traditional dhows. It’s well worth a
walk around, looking at the traditional fishing traps and admiring the wooden boats. This is also a popular place for fishing, which is forbidden around most of the Corniche. Rather than casting lines, most of these fisherman use long rods to get the bait to the small fish which they usually catch.
This used to be the location of the superb dhow restaurants, now sadly demolished. From here you can see across to the Museum of Islamic arts, which has been constructed on its own artificial island. Although, like most of the museums in Qatar, it is currently closed, its opening is scheduled towards the end of 2007.
On from the museum is a huge commercial harbour. On the other side of this, fishing boats congregate, and sometimes you can buy fish fresh off the boats. There’s also a little cafe where fisherman like to congregate to drink strong Turkish coffee and smoke tobacco through long water pipes while playing dominoes.
On the other side of the road is another park, barer than the other two but again with a children’s playing area. This park backs into Qatar’s National Museum – although this is under renovation, you can still walk around and look at the displays.
The restaurant Ras Al Nasa and Doha club are at the very end of the Corniche and bring our walk to an end Overall, the Corniche is clean, well maintained and popular, and offers a superb view of Doha’s beautiful bay. If it only had a couple more cafes and some ice-creams parlours where we could rest our weary feet and soothe our parched throats, it would be perfect!
Also see: The Corniche Virgin (posted on www.greeker.blogspot.com)
Things to See and Things to Do in Qatar
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As I write this I am sitting in Sheraton Park, a public park located next to Doha's iconic Sheraton hotel. Sheraton Park is the first of what will eventually be three i-parks. (Al-Rumailah
Park and Dahl-Alhamam Park will also be wired up.)
There is no charge for the connection, nor is there any need to register or use a Q-tel password. Despite this, I only noticed one other laptop user. The park, as usual, was dominated by families relaxing on their day off.
I initially had trouble connecting to the internet using my wireless connection and Firefox, but had more success with Microsoft Internet Explorer. After I connected, my browser took me to the Sheraton Park home page.
Signal strength started varied from weak to medium when I opened the connection. However, when I moved into the centre of the park the connection became strong. According to Internet Frog my connection, currently running at 647 kbps, is substantially faster than my home ADSL connection, which should run at 500 kbps but can run as slow as 40. (Just for comparison, British Telecom's standard broadband connection is now 8 Mbps - 16 times faster than Q-tel).
Never-the-less, the internet is still crawling – I'm writing this on word as I haven’t yet managed to log on to blogger, so my idea of blogging about blogging in Sheraton Park while in Sheraton Park may not work.
Still, Qtel’s internet service swings like a pendelum in terms of speed and at other times it may prove a real pleasure to saunter down in the pleasant spring weather and surf the internet (for free) for an hour or two on the pleasant green grasses of Sheraton Park.
Also See: Doha Guide
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Colourful dhows light up the night on the Corniche.
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A giant inflated road sign announces the Ashgal Milestone 2007 exhibition alongside Orry, the (currently redundant) Asian Games Mascot. It's perhaps not the most exciting exhibition in the world. Doha has been laid out in a model as it will look in the future, but surrounding the model are diagrams of traffic installations. It is, after all, organised by Ashgal, the Qatar Public Works Authority.
The lighting, however, is beautiful, and the atmosphere warm. A wooden partition resembling a stone wall has been set up with sofas for guest to relax while being served dates and traditional Arabic coffee flavoured with cinnamon. Old pictures of Doha adorn the partition.
The exhibition is free, and will be open until 7th April.
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At this jetty on the Corniche, close to the Sheraton hotel, you can watch brightly coloured fish swimming in the clear water around you while relaxing in the warm winter sun. Look closely, and you will see bigger fish lurking below these small fry.
Click here to listen to the sound of water lapping against the jetty.
Tourist dhows playing loud traditional music will take you on brief trips round the bay. Be careful, though - the fifteen riyal price can rapidly become fifty riyals when you are on the boat, no matter how carefully you check beforehand.
Listen to the sounds of a tourist dhow playing traditional music.
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No, they don’t put you in the middle of the road and then drive Landcruisers and Nissan trucks through red lights at you (although this option is still available) – the Corniche Experience is actually a much more gentle exploration of the five senses.
In the smelly tent (okay, the scent tent) you can experience the different smells of Qatar and 
the Asian Games. The sight tent has both images of the games and some very cool rotating lights – which you can change by racing on bikes - and in the dark touch tent you put your hand into metal cylinders and guess what you are touching before the object lights up. Outside, multi-coloured flags wave in the wind and speakers blast out both the music and the sounds of the games. The taste tent was the only disappointment – when we were there they didn’t have anything to taste except a few boiled sweets, although it was a little early in the day.
The Corniche Experience is located at 
the West Bay end of the Corniche near the Sheraton Hotel. In the Sheraton Park there’s also a big screen for broadcasting live coverage of the Asian Games (including the opening and closing ceremonies), a stage for showcasing traditional dances and entertainment from across Asia, shopping tents and food from different countries (at very reasonable prices). You can get your tickets to the Asian Games here, too, – we got our tickets for the football finals for Qr 20 ($5). Overall, well worth the trip.
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