Luxury and Headaches
After a long time being holed up because of Covid, in the summer of 2021 it felt like things were returning to normal. People were gathering again, mask mandates were lifting, and travel was finally opening up. A quick trip to Ireland in June had reignited my desire to get back out there! With a group of long-time friends, we booked a two-week vacation to Greece with an overnight in Doha, Qatar on the way. I’ve written a bit about the planning (see here and here) and will share highlights of an amazing time in Greece in upcoming posts but the Qatar portion of the trip was definitely a mixed bag. I’ve been to Doha a few times but traveling in the age of Covid made this a real headache.
We decided to fly to Athens via Doha because there was an excellent promotion on business class ticket fares. We were able to fly from Washington, DC to Athens, in arguably the best business class cabin anywhere, all for about the same price we would have paid in economy plus on other airlines. It seems counter-intuitive to fly eastward past Athens to then return to the west to get there, and we had very long layovers, but flying Qatar Airways is an experience in itself. We’d have a few hours to see a little of Doha too. I am always up for an adventure like this and was able to convince the others.
Much has been written about Qatar’s Qsuite business class which I’ve enjoyed many times so I won’t repeat all of that here. Let’s just say it’s really a great way to travel – wonderful service, fantastic on-demand gourmet food, and excellent lie-flat beds with lots of privacy. Covid protocols were good and we felt safe, though a little restricted wearing a mask for the 14-hour flight. One other major benefit is that Qatar Airways is a member of the oneworld airline alliance so we were also earning loads of miles for future travel. There were four of us traveling together and we were seated in one of the “quads” with walls which opened up so that we could all be together in privacy. We were anticipating a great trip and the champagne was flowing!
After a good night of sleep, we landed at Doha’s Hamad International Airport (HIA) at about 4:30 pm local time, around 30 minutes ahead of schedule. I was glad to be a little early because I had planned for us to quickly settle in our hotel and then walk to see the new National Museum of Qatar, which closed at 7 pm. Having flown through HIA and on business class before, I expected a quick and smooth trip through passport control and into a taxi. Wow, was I disappointed.
I should have expected there to be challenges in Doha given that we’d already had two hiccups on this trip before we had even left DC. Qatar requires that you pre-register with the Ministry of Public Health before entering the county. With this pre-registration you upload your Covid vaccination and test status information and get “approved” which allows you to avoid having to self-quarantine upon arrival. On the morning of our flight, we all, one by one, received denials of our applications. In the end, the denials were all due to technicalities and were all resolved but this certainly added a little unnecessary drama to our departure routines. Then, to make matters worse, when I arrived at the airport in Washington to depart, I realized I had lost my glasses somewhere en route. I was never able to find them and I had to spend the rest of the trip making do with prescription sunglasses and squinting.
Due to Covid protocols, at the airport there was no expedited process for business class passengers like I had experienced before. Everyone marched together to the first stop which was another Covid test. We had already taken Covid tests 72 hours before we left the US but were unexpectedly required to take one upon arrival, to the tune of $70 each. After the tests, we proceeded through passport control and on to the arrivals area. In addition to the pre-registration with the Ministry of Public Health website, Qatar also requires that you download an app (called Ehteraz) to your phone. Downloading was the easy part! You are also required to purchase a local SIM card for your phone and keep your Ehteraz app open and on Bluetooth at all times. The basic premise of this is that your Covid status is available for others to see (when you enter a restaurant for example) and you also can be aware if there are others who have Covid who are near you. The SIM card really proved to be the challenge! We had no idea where to even purchase one (you had to do this before you could leave the airport) and tensions were high among us as we struggled to figure this out with no clear signs or instructions anywhere. Eventually we found a nice stranger who knew what to do and was giving advice to hoards of people. We waited in another line to buy the SIM cards and then began the problem of figuring out what to do with them. For those who may not know, a SIM card is what connects your mobile phone to a telephone service provider. It’s smaller than your pinky fingernail and there is a little slot on your phone where it’s inserted and can be replaced. Someone again helped us, and a ton of other people, use a paperclip to pop open the slot and change the SIM cards (also being sure not to lose our US-based ones).
Finally, after all of this, we were able to leave the airport. It was about 7:00 pm and that entire experience took up about two and half hours and any opportunity to do see or do anything at the museum. It was dark outside and, to make matter worse, the heat index was about 115 degrees Fahrenheit. We were all tired, hungry, hot, and very grumpy by the time we got to the hotel. Covid protocols made for a lengthy check in at the Doubletree Doha Old Town but luckily we had their famous cookies to snack on while we waited. This is a nice hotel, not too far from the airport and well situated for the museums and the Souq Waqif. With the heat and all of the local construction as Doha prepares for the 2022 World Cup, we all agreed that walking around the Souq was not a very good idea.
The highlight of the evening (well of the whole Qatar leg really) was a delicious dinner at Damasca One restaurant in the Souq. The two-story Syrian restaurant has a colorful blue and green décor with inside and outside seating and beautiful woodwork and colored glass throughout. Our eyes were very much bigger than our stomachs but we had a wonder feast on different types of hummus, pita, baba ghanoush, kababs, grilled meats and chicken with an amazing rice pudding for dessert. No alcohol was served but we had fresh watermelon juice and a delicious tamarind drink served by a well decked-out server.
Early the next morning we departed for the airport to make our 7:30 am flight. All went well until our Ehteraz app statuses were checked. The app shows a color to reflect your individual status (i.e., green = no Covid) and three of the four of us had a grey color as our app status. This meant that they could not let us into the airport which would have been a big problem for our onward travel to Athens! Luckily, again, we had a very nice airport worker who helped us through this, really beyond the call of duty. He was able to call the Ministry of Public Health officials and obtain the status of the Covid tests we had taken less than 24 hours earlier. Ironically, we had never received our own test results since we had to change to the Qatari SIM cards! Our US phone numbers were not working while we were there. Once he confirmed that we were Covid-free he allowed us to pass through to check in for our flight to Greece.
Safely settled into our business class seats on our flight to Athens, we switched back our SIM cards (with the help of the flight attendant) and ordered breakfast champagne. A few of our phones were not the same until we got back to the US, but we were glad to leave Qatar and head on to the next leg of the journey. It was a long ordeal for a good meal!
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