{"id":3101,"date":"2024-06-03T15:31:22","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T21:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/willingtowander.com\/blog\/?p=3101"},"modified":"2026-05-14T09:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T15:16:14","slug":"making-our-way-westward-to-qatar-and-cyprus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willingtowander.com\/blog\/making-our-way-westward-to-qatar-and-cyprus\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Our Way Westward to Qatar and Cyprus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After our big Nepal Adventure we planned about 5 days at a resort in Cyprus for nice warm weather to relax a bit. Kathmandu is a relatively small airport, so to get to Cyprus we would have to do a layover. Since it was one of our longer flights of the year we looked again to use our points and found a flight on Qatar Airways with a 20 hour layover in Doha, Qatar. However, the beauty of points is that with some airlines you are able to extend layovers to multiple days and do a stopover instead. Qatar also is encouraging tourists to come for up to a 4 day stopover so they have hotel deals that run about $15 per person, per night, not far from some of the attractions. So we decided to take advantage and added one more country to our Asia journey to make it a nice round 10!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Taste of Qatar<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We were only there two nights with an 8am flight out our last day so we didn\u2019t have too much time to explore. Our hotel was much nicer than I had expected given the affordable rate and we could get there via their light rail and a bit of walking. The light rail was really nice and clean and not terribly busy. We did have a bit of a walk to the hotel but it was probably good for us to walk after a few days of mostly resting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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View of downtown with 2022 World Cup sign<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We didn\u2019t end up trying any Qatari food so I cannot comment on that but we did walk to the sea and get some pictures of monuments or statues made for the 2022 World Cup that Qatar had hosted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Camels riding around the lawn<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There was also a building nearby on a hill with a sloping green lawn, where camels and riders were riding in a group, perhaps doing some sort of training exercise as it seemed fairly organized. It was so strange to see camels on grass instead of in the desert!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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While walking around we were approached by several taxi drivers offering to give us rides and tours but we mostly wanted to be out and stretch our legs and not commit to a full or half day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mr. Wander having me pose with the skyline<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Eventually the heat did get to me so we found a little grocery store for some refreshing beverages on the way back to the hotel. Qatar in general seemed to be a very clean country, and I\u2019m not sure it was the the contrast to being in Kathmandu and India recently, but it also seemed so empty. We didn\u2019t really see other tourists walking around and other than the 4-5 taxi drivers and the camel riders there weren’t any people either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One other fun thing to see in Doha is in the airport they have what’s called the Oasis, which is a small jungle garden you can walk around in the terminal!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Catching up on Sleep in Cyprus<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We landed in Larnaca mid day and ordered a taxi using the Bolt app and after about an hour drive we made it to our hotel in Nicosia. Cyprus is split to the globally recognized country of Cyprus that many refer to the \u201cGreek side\u201d, where we were. The other side, which is mostly the northeastern coast, is known as the \u201cTurkish side\u201d and only Turkey recognizes as a separate country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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View from our breakfast table<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We used points and took advantage of the \u201cpay for 4 nights get the 5th free\u201d as well as status to get access to the Executive lounge. Similar to the hotel in Pune, it had enough food to make it our dinner each night. Between that, our free breakfast, and leftover snacks from the trek, we ate pretty well and only needed to get lunch one day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Beautiful Hotel Lobby<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, we were still recovering so we never actually ventured out which was partly why we didn’t try to get food elsewhere. We both had the “Khombu cough” another week or more and I had some other issues that didn’t make me want to stray far from our hotel room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was Easter on the 5th of May in the Orthodox church<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I did go for a swim in the pool once but we mostly spent our time doing laundry, calling family, planning future parts of our trip, getting another post out, and enjoying the very comfy bed. It was nice that we also had gotten upgraded to a suite so we had a nice couch to work on as well!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Next Time\u2026is sooner than you think!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I know, very short post, but I didn\u2019t want to completely skip over these countries even though we barely scratched the surface, if that. So, we have put together a Bonus post for ya’ll! Remember a few posts back when I asked if anyone would be interested in some of the data from the trip? Several of you have commented or messaged us to “bring on the data!” and now we’ve made some pretty graphs just for you! Check it out here<\/a>. You\u2019re welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After our big Nepal Adventure we planned about 5 days at a resort in Cyprus for nice warm weather to relax a bit. Kathmandu is a relatively small airport, so to get to Cyprus we would have to do a layover. Since it was one of our longer flights of the year we looked again […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[94,117,116,127],"tags":[153,156],"class_list":["post-3101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-cyprus","category-europe","category-qatar","tag-cyprus","tag-qatar"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t