We will have what seems to be a fairly comment layover time in Doha, 5pm arrival and 3am departure. Traveling with our teenage son and very active mid 70s father-in-law. None of us have ever entered Qatar, only transited half a dozen times. We will have access the the Qatar business class lounge, but 10 hours seems like a lot there.

We love food and wouldn't mind seeing Doha, but most of the quick night tours I've seen are around $100-140pp. We've seen a number of souks in our life so the novelty of that won't be that great, unless there is something special I am missing. Are we better off just catching a cab and doing a DIY for a few hours then back to the lounge to get cleaned up for our flight? We'll leave our luggage at the lounge so will be traveling light.

DiY is the way to go. Drive along the corniche to see the skyline and the Islamic museum of art designed by IMPei ..musuem and the national musuem close at 7 so you probably wouldn't make it. We ate at a good middle eastern restaurant right behind the hilton doha on the beach ..I dont recall the name but great grill and appetizers with large portions etc. You could have a table on the beach. I know some might suggest the pearl but really it's pretty sterile and not that interesting to see.

Curious to see what you did here- we are in exactly the same situation.

We ended up just going to the souk, mainly to eat at a fantastic Yemini restaurant. It's a bit of a scrum finding a table as they don't have a formal line, you just stand around waiting by a table like you would at a fast food place. Uber was very easy both directions, and cheap. Be careful with the traffic though, we sat in the car for about 10 minutes stuck in traffic while he tried to get us to the souk entrance when it was only a 1 minute walk from the place we were stuck in traffic. Not the driver's fault, I wasn't specific that we didn't care where we were dropped and I was not looking at my phone to see how close we were. Only takes about 15 minutes to get to the souk.

We spent about four hours outside of the airport then just went back and enjoyed the lounge for the rest of the time. I wanted to see the garden and North lounge.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaura...rant-Doha.html

will be in the same situation in a few weeks. have a long layover in doha and would love to explore the city for a bit. you mention leaving your carry on bags in the lounge. were lockers readily available? and did folks care you were leaving the airport to explore the city and then returning later on?

I think your question's already been posed and answered in the Qatar forum.

Lockers are available: generally there's no problem finding a free one, but that's not guaranteed. Nobody will question your motives for dumping your bags.

thanks for the info. yes I did post in the other forum, but wanted to inquire on this post as well to get some recent insight.