Doha

Doha curves around its pearl-colored bay in a deliberate crescent: dhows in the foreground, the West Bay tower forest across the water, and at the hinge the Museum of Islamic Art — I. M. Pei's stacked geometry on its own island, holding twelve centuries of calligraphy, astrolabes and carpets in perfectly cooled light. A city that pearl-diving built and gas rebuilt, it hosted the world once and kept the metro, the parks and the confidence.

The traveller starts at Souq Waqif in the evening, when the heat stands down — a rebuilt-but-real market of spice alleys, oud smoke and shisha courtyards, complete with a falcon souq where the birds perch hooded like small dignitaries and hold, this is true, their own passports for travel; then the MIA and its five-arch view of the skyline; the corniche walk at sunset; and, with half a day, the dunes south to the inland sea, where the desert slides straight into the gulf.

The Guide's practical counsel: winter is the season and evening is the hour — plan the outdoors from November to March and the museums for the afternoons —; the metro is clean, cheap and cardless-friendly; dress modestly in souq and museums out of courtesy; alcohol lives in licensed hotels only; and Friday mornings the city sleeps in, so make it your dune morning and return for the souq's second wind at dusk.