Ferraris & Tea

Ferrari's, F1 drivers and Afternoon Tea at the Ritz Carlton - today I impersonated a posh person. Or as a friend posted on Facebook "Life in the Very Fast Lane".

Today was the Scuderia Ferrari Live Street Demo in Qatar, brought to you by the partnership of Shell and Ferrari and to kick off the Qatar Motor Show which doesn't actually start for a week or two...but hey, that's Qatar for you.

We learned from our attempt to see the National Day parade and went down to the Corniche nice and early. After 3 hours of waiting (ugh), the show started with a parade of the privately owned Ferraris in Qatar. Yes, in country this size (2 million or so people) they were able to gather 26 of them. The worst part is, that probably wasn't even all of them....

(I tried valiantly to upload all 26 on video...but after one hour, I gave up hope that it was going to work...will try again tomorrow!)

Then, my camera battery died.

Luckily our friends managed to catch a couple of pictures with their iphones, but I really wanted a video of the next part.

Marc Gene drove an actual F1 car up and down the Corniche (from Sheraton Roundabout to QNB Roundabout for those who know Doha), about 8 times! It was pretty cool. He didn't go at top speed (obviously) but he did go fast. You could barely turn your head fast enough to catch the car go by! They even did 3 pit stop demos and they changed all 4 tires in 5 seconds!! I am not joking - 5 seconds!!

The car gave off way more exhaust fumes then I was expecting - it was pretty stinky and cloudy behind it. It was loud too, but not as loud as I expected. The driver did a few tricks - over steering once and then some doughnuts (360s) as well.

Thanks L for the pic!

Thanks F for the pic!

After the show, I went to meet some friends at the Ritz Carlton for Afternoon Tea, which was another Doha first for me. So classy! I didn't actually feel like I belonged in there The tables are set with lovely china and (if you can eat gluten) you can order a tea that comes with a small silver tray of small sandwiches, scones and desserts. They serve marscapone, jam and lemon curd (how posh!) to go with the scones. I had a salad (boo) but it was still nice. I made up for not being able to have sandwiches by skipping the tea and opting for a "Cafe Toledo" (coffee, baileys and kahlua...ha.)

Just another weekend...Doha style!

Palm trees & Ferrari

Empty stands for the VIPs...as usual

Sun & wind protection!

Yummy!