As a family, we get together on even years for Thanksgiving and odd years for Christmas. With December 2024, not being our year, we decided to go on a Christmas cruise. After looking at several options, we decided on a cruise that embarked at Doha, Qatar and disembarked at Mauritius. Norwegian Cruise Line was having a 2 for 1 air fare sale, so we up-graded to make the most of the trip and we did a back to back cruise, ending in Cape Town, South Africa.

We flew out of our home airport to Salt Lake City and “enjoyed” our last American breakfast…lol

From Salt Lake City, we flew to New York, where we transferred to Qatar Airways to Doha. Even economy, got a bit of swag for the flight.

Throughout history, the area of Qatar has been ruled by numerous empires. In 1916, during World War I, the Ottomans ceded the area to the British, in exchange for military protection. Qatar declared it’s independence in September 1971. The young country had several coups, with the last being in 1995. This led to a governmental transformation and a new constitution was approved in 2003. The economy relies heavily on oil and gas exports, particularly natural gas.

We ate very well on our flight.

Our first look at Doha and not looking too bad after our 16 hour flight!!

After landing in Doha, we made our way through customs. We were told there was a visa fee, and we were sent to 3 different agents to collect the fee, but at each station we were told there was a problem. The fourth agent, looked at our documents and waved us through saying there was no fee, but had no explanation. After collecting our luggage, we were flagged for an additional luggage check, which we passed. We were just glad to make it out of the airport. (On the cruise ship, we heard a visa fee of 15-35 USD was collected from most of the guests)

Because we had purchased air through the cruise line, our pre-cruise hotel was included. There was a transfer bus to the Al Messila Resort. It was very nice place…we were provided with a Koran and a pray mat, which was understandable being a Muslim country. We were also given a bamboo tooth brush, as they are very environmentally minded.

We ate a hibachi dinner at the on-site restaurant. It was very good

The next morning, we took a shuttle to the cruise terminal…a few pictures of the drive

At the cruise terminal, we could drop our luggage and walk back to the pier shops which was about 1/2 mile, or we could board the ship. The line to drop luggage was extremely long so we decided to board the ship and that still took over an hour.

The ship was decorated for Christmas and we decorated our cabin door as well

The view of Doha as our ship left port was amazing

We finished our first day on the NCL Dawn with three desserts, a show in the theater, and a little late night music

The next day we would arrive at our first official port…Abu Dhabi, UAE.