06 January 2009 05:59 GMT
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Exploring the city
- Top sights |
- Restaurant picks |
- Hotel picks |
- Bar picks |
- For the family |
- Outdoors |
- Shopping |
Being a relatively new city, Doha offers a very mall-centric experience for shoppers, and while it's possible to find almost anything you want, variety can be limited. The malls can also get extremely busy on the weekend, but are usually pleasantly quiet mid-week.
Along the Airport Road itself, there is very little beyond smaller supermarkets and fast-food outlets. The shopping centres, all of them strong on fashion items and designer sunglasses, are mostly located less than 45 minutes taxi ride away from the airport, though roadworks and bad driving make it difficult to judge exact times.
- The most recent and brightly painted of Doha's shopping centres is Villagio (+974 413 5444), located about 40-45 minutes from the airport. The mall has been given a mock-European look, including its very own canal which comes complete with gondolier. The majority of its shops are trendy fashion outlets, but for many the real draw is the Virgin Megastore, which revolutionised life for many Doha residents when it opened earlier this year and plugged what had been a gaping hole in the Doha market. Villagio also has a number of very pleasant restaurants clustered around an indoor ice-rink.
- Alternatively, the huge City Centre mall is about 25-30 minutes from the airport, and offers a wide selection of shops including Debenhams and more dedicated fashion outlets such as Fcuk and Pierre Cardin. Like Villagio, the City Centre's enormous Carrefour supermarket is a good place to pick up electrical goods such as mobile phones, digital cameras, MP3 players and various accessories. If walking up and down the length of the mall gets too much, there are also coffee shops and two noisy, fast-food courts at either end.
- Royal Plaza (+974 413 0000 www.royalplazadoha.com), about 20 minutes from the airport, is a more compact shopping centre with a selection of outlets most of which cater to women's fashion and designer accessories, but there is also a CD shop and a small department store.
- Further out, the Landmark shopping centre (+974 487 5222 www.landmarkdoha.com) , about 50 minutes away, contains, again, a number of fashion outlets. These include Massimo Dutti for the men and Mango and Monsoon for the ladies. There is a Marks and Spencer, and various jewellery concessions are dotted around the mall. Landmark also features The One, a large home furnishings store (which has now also opened a branch in Villagio).
For something a bit more traditional, Souq Waqif is Doha's new 'old souq'. Purposefully recreated along the lines of a traditional souq, it's located down by the corniche, about 20-25 minutes from the airport but bear in mind that the souq isn't open in the middle of the day and only really gets going in the evening. The best time to head down is after 6pm. Despite its tourist credentials, the souq sells a large amount of hum-drum household goods. The more tourist-oriented fare is limited to just a couple of streets, but strong on Arabic flavour, Souq Waqif is the place to pick up those more traditional gifts - dates, incense, Arabic coffee pots (dellah) or sedu print fabric.
For the curious, the souq also has a few more unusual items including old photographs of Doha and some Iraqi currency. And, depending on the weather, it can be a pleasant place to wander.
If you're feeling a bit more adventurous and don't mind hunting about in the heat, then set back behind Souq Waqif (away from the corniche), across a car park and over the main road is the 'gold souq’.
The layout is not as obviously traditional as the tourist-oriented Souq Waqif - in fact it's just a collection of tiny, pokey workshops - but here you'll find a reasonable collection of gold and silver jewellery and can watch the goldsmiths at work.
There are also gift shops in Doha's five star hotels. The Four Seasons (+974 494 8888 www.fourseasons.com/doha), down on the corniche and close-by to the City Centre has a Montblanc outlet while about 45 minutes way from the airport, the RitzCarlton's (+974 484 8000 www.ritzcarlton.com) marble-floored lobby houses a Gucci outlet.
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