Because our flight back to Sydney doesn't leave until this evening, we were able to sleep in. We went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast at about 9:30am. So we'd had more than eight hours sleep.
There was plenty of choice for breakfast - more than at any of the hotels we've stayed at on this holiday. The omelette I had was the best of the trip. However the pastries were nowhere near as good as in Europe.
The hotel complex has a new shopping centre attached and Suzy went to check it out at about 11am but found it disappointing. There was nothing too exciting and many shops had not opened yet. The cafes were closed - probably because of Ramadan. Nevertheless the architecture of the building was impressive.
The Club Lounge was closed for renovations and instead they made the restaurant available for snacks during the day. We took advantage of this to have a light lunch.
When we'd checked in last night, the hotel offered us late check-out. They would also organise a car totake us to the airport. Originally we'd specified 6pm but today we changes it to 5pm to make sure we had plenty of time.
For a while, it looked like this was a good decision because the main road was blocked by police for someone important and the traffic wasn't moving. However our driver turned off to find another route and we reached the airport before 5:30pm.
The roads in Doha are so wide - often four or more lanes in each direction. The driver pointed out buildings of interest as we went - including the new museum.
At the airport, there is a separate entry for business class for customs clearance and security checking. We then walked past the giant panda to the business lounge. We are getting much better at finding the lounge. The free WiFi reception was patchy and we had to move to a different area of the lounge to get an internet connection.
Because it was Ramadan, there was no alcohol available in the airport (or just about anywhere else for that matter). We had a delicious sandwich in the business lounge because we didn't want to wait hours more for the dinner on the plane.
There is even a separate lounge for business class passengers at the departure gate. The airbridge leads upstairs to the business class cabin on the A380. Qatar does a good job of loading customers onto this huge plane in a timely manner.
Once again the Qatar service in business class was excellent. However on this leg, the business class cabin was full - I didn't see any empty seats. Some of the passengers were children and there was one baby. The food and wine wasn't as good as on the previous leg but it would have been hard to beat that experience.
We both watched a movie but I noticed that Suzy fell asleep while she was watching hers. We both changed into our Qatar pyjamas ready for a sleep on this 14 hour flight.
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