Qatar - any favourite forts, museums or other interesting places

[TravelMusings]

Mulling over whether I could combine Qatar with my Saudi trip. Has anyone been to Qatar and got any favourites? Only a little digging brings up quite a list of forts but which are abandoned and unappreciated and which are somewhat looked after heritage sites? I'm not anticipating, say, French level education & preservation of heritage sites but, on the other hand, I wouldn't want to spend a day travelling to an overhyped underdeveloped site unless it is a heck of a cool ruin.

I lived there for 4 years and don’t remember any real forts worth seeing. There was a movie set of one we went to once which was a fun visit. General desert trips are fun (there are singing sand dunes, opportunities to blow kart or dig for for gypsum roses), there’s one main museum if I remember - on the corniche. If you’re already going to Saudi I would say it’s not worth a visit .

Thanks @CRbear , what do Qataris do in their leisure time? It appears there are a few (new?) museums so I'll go to those and I'll look into your suggestions too. Otherwise, when in Rome and all that...

You don’t get to interact with locals much, or didn't then, but walking the corniche is popular, you see lots of people picnicking there. Going to shopping malls. Driving in the desert. Getting haircuts/treatments.

I enjoyed the Museum of Islamic Art, it was designed by the same person that did the Louvre.
Boat trips in Doha are worth doing particularly at sunset.
I went to a fort that was booked with Get Your Guide that was part of a tour of North Qatar. You can see Bahrain from the fort and it was nice to see a bit more of the country.
Ubers are incredibly cheap so you can easily do a few things in the same day. I also went to a Museum of Illusions which wasn’t cultural but was fun.
On the Friday I attended a brunch during the day, another day I went to a mall with a canal in it and had a mini ride on a gondola .
I went for a couple of walks on the Pearl which was where I stayed.