The Small Souq Invasion

We went to the main souq here.  A souq is like an old-fashioned mall...and Souq Waqif is this amazing maze of stores, from spices and cookware to fabrics to random stuff to animals.  The middle of the souq includes a number of excellent restaurants.  More on that in a moment.  And here's the wikipedia link for Souq Waqif, too.

Taking photos here is tricky--I cannot take photos, even as part of the background, of Muslim women or children.  I've been told that if I hold the camera up and wait a moment, any concerned parties will move away from the frame, but since the souq is one of the most traditional, and most Bedouin, areas of the city, I don't want to chance it.  That means my photos are limited to specific situations rather than the overall view of the market.

When we arrived, there was a camel pen next to the parking lot.

And when we left, it was nighttime.

The main things we did were eat dinner, walk through maybe 1/3 of the meandering pathways (this is really like an Arabic Diagon Alley for you Harry Potter fans).  The temperature here during the day is in the 110's, so spending time outdoors before sunset isn't much fun (unless a gigantic pool is involved).  Souq Waqif gets very busy at night.

As we approached the souq with the kids, John and I remembered our last trip here, in February.  We had taken a taxi from the hotel to the souq for a few last-minute soveniers, and our time was limited by the deadline for leaving to the airport.  We cut it very close to our deadline--in fact, back at the hotel, the airport bus was waiting for us and we had five minutes to get our stuff--but as we left, with only a small fraction of the things we'd hoped to buy, we kept saying, "That's okay--we'll be back here one way or another."  Now, only 5 months later, it's surreal to have that come true.