East of Suez – Part 3 – Museums Continued

10th January, 2024

(Just to mention, in case you don’t get to the end of this post, there is a postscript at the end, with some sad news about our great friend, Shree).

As promised, another stunning museum today (yesterday, but I won’t go through all that again!).

We had a good night’s sleep (all relative, of course) and decided to set off early (also relative) to the Museum of Islamic Art, located due north of our hotel on the other side of the Souq. Another interesting piece of architecture on the water’s edge with the Corniche winding from our left to the shore opposite where the high rise buildings are.

The inside is very spacious and airy (like all the buildings we seem to have been in here), with the exhibitions arranged on two main floors. The items on display range from carpets, costumes and calligraphy to paintings, carvings, ceramics and jewellery and all are exquisite in their own way. Again, very well displayed with no sense that you are going to be overwhelmed.

They very kindly offered Val a wheelchair, which proved useful – and I even managed to avoid making her motion sick (as I managed to on one occasion!). Here is a very select sample of some of what was on offer…

We managed to persuade the very nice Tunisian chap behind the ticket counter to organise another taxi for us and came back to the hotel for a bit of R&R (ie Val had a snooze) before setting off again in the afternoon. The plan now was to see a shopping mall, but we also decided to try a Keralan Ayurvedic massage nearby. The latter was excellent and I had quite high hopes that the strong chap who did me might be able to do something about my sciatica. Indeed, initially I felt wonderful, not least having been rubbed down with something like Olbas Oil (eucalyptus?), so I came out wide awake and ready to take on the world. Sadly these things are so often momentary, but it was good while it lasted.

We strolled over to the shopping mall – vast but half empty of shops and people and all-in-all very disappointing. So we left that behind and tried to organise a taxi to take us to a Keralan restaurant that Val’s masseuse had recommended. We had rather handicapped ourselves regarding taxis. When organised by the hotel, no problem as they order up the local, official taxis, who have a meter and who you can pay with a credit card. However, these seem to be rare as a cab that you can just hail and all the other taxis operate on a cash basis only (unless you have an Uber or equivalent account). As we had been trying to avoid getting cash, we were rather reliant on the former, which, when stuck out in the outer edge of the city, meant that eventually we were going to have to succumb. A very nice lady in the Carrefours supermarket organised an Uber for us, advising that we could pay by card. Taxi arrived, but would only take cash. So muggins here dashes off to the ATM at the Bank of Doha – but disaster!!! None of my cards were acceptable. Our Tunisian driver very kindly looked after Val during all of this, then drove us to another ATM and hooray – cash was forthcoming!

It was then off to Restaurant Chef Pillai, which turned out to be very up-market and distinctly fusion (quite a lot of Chinese items on the menu). The good news was the lovely lass who served us could recommend a wonderful Keralan curried fish dish with appum and idiappum (stringhoppers). She actually came from Palghat, which is where Val’s parents came from. So a wonderful meal all round.

One postscript. We started the morning with some sad news. Our very great friend, Shree, who had been suffering from pancreatic cancer for some time, passed away last Sunday. We had been to see her before we left and we knew she had had great difficulties with the chemotherapy and it really did not look promising, but the end was sooner than we were expecting (though possibly a blessing for Shree). We were both shocked and saddened by her death, as you can imagine – and many of those reading this blog will remember her as a great friend of the family. Our kids all knew her as Auntie Shree and she will be greatly missed.