86
JANUARY 2013
•
HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
THREE PERFECT DAYS
||
DOHA
you spend an evening in the company of
jazz legend (and the club’s artistic direc-
tor) Wynton Marsalis. Between sets, the
musicians mingle with the audience, and
you’re joined for dinner by saxophonist
Walter Blanding, who, havingwatched you
demolish pla ers of succulent crab cakes
and lobster, declares his own entrée to be
“
the best darn burger I’ve ever had.”
After dinner, you down a Sazerac—a
NewOrleans twist on the old-fashioned—
andmarvel at this cosmopolitannightspot,
smack-dab in the middle of the Middle
East. ASazerac or two later, themood light-
ing seems evenmoodier. Time for a snooze.
DAY TWO
| It’s another dazzler outside,
so you grope your way to a bathroom
bigger than many hotel suites and hit the
shower. Then you pop downstairs to one
of the St. Regis’ 10 on-site eateries, Vine, for
a perfectly prepared chili-infused omelet.
You’ll need the extra zing, you figure, for
the experience that awaits.
Driving in Doha isn’t for the faint-
hearted, but it’s a must if you want to go
beyond the city limits. So you rent a car
and hurtle north toward
Al Khor
.
While
Qatar’s industrial second city is hardly an
obvious destination, you want to see its
wharf, which turns out to be well worth
the 45-minute trip. The hulking dhows
here were built using age-old methods
in the nearby shipyard, and they still ply
ancient trade routes. The captain of one
scruffy vessel invites you to join him on
deck for a glass of tea. You take him up on
it (much to the consternation of his crew),
and are entertained with what you hope
are salty tales of the high seas but, given
the language barrier, might be a commen-
tary on the state of cricket in his home
country of India.
A 50-minute drive northwest takes you
throughanarid, relentlesslyflat landscape,
the monotony occasionally broken by an
oasis or a pre y mosque. You’re heading
for a local oddity:
Zubara
,
an abandoned
18
th-century se lement that’s become a
sort of al fresco museum. Upon arriving,
you stroll among its ruined houses, then
tour the nearby Zubara Fort, an imposing
early-20th-century structure that must
have been an unhappy post in the days
before air conditioning.
Turning back toward Doha, you stop
at
Al Shahaniya Camel Racetrack
,
about
20
miles outside the city. There’s no race
