Parking In the Gold Souk.

Parking in the gold souk happens to be one of the subjects I love to discuss. I believe it has improved my decision making and parking skills a 100 times. If anyone needed to learn how to become quick at making decisions and how to become a bully in the parking lot; Gold souk parking would have taught you lessons no one ever could have ever hoped to teach. Well now that has changed. Thanks to some changes done by the RTA. Thank God for that.

Anyways here are a few tips anyways, since during the free and peak hours, gold souk parking lot reverts to its old mad, crazy self.

First things first; Gold souk has paid parking. The paid parking hours are 9 a.m to 1 p.m and then 4 p.m till 9 p.m. therefore 1 p.m till 4 p.m its free parking. If you come to the gold souk around 12.00 p.m onwards the chances of you finding parking easily are slim. People in the gold souk have different shifts and sometimes no shifts :) . Just random working hours. But hope does prevail. Around 1.00 p.m onwards some people [like me] do leave the gold souk for lunch. So if you are hoping to visit the gold souk in the afternoon, the chances of finding hassle free parking around 2.30 p.m onwards are pretty good. Around 4.30p.m onwards it starts getting a bit difficult again.

The next gap would be around 7.00 p.m. But this gap is short lived so you have to be quick. It lasts for roughly half an hour. This is the time the office goers get off from work. So keep a look out. It is common in the gold souk for people to motion and ask if you need parking. If someone is walking into the gold souk parking lot it is  okay to ask them where is their car parked. Sometimes they will tell you sometimes they wont depending on the rush hour. The reason being; if there is a car already double parked behind their car [in hope of parking] and the person gives you the parking spot, it may result in a fight and police being called. at worst fist fights and being taken to the police station. Such scenarios were quite common before, but have thankfully eased now. 

Keep a sharp look who is walking into the parking lot, majority of the time they are walking towards their car to leave or to simply to renew the parking hour ticket. No one goes for a stroll in the parking lot :P. 

But you have to be sharp and a little impolite. Do not keep two cars distance between your car and the car leaving the parking spot, otherwise chances are another car will zoom by and park in your spot before you can blink. So yeah it can be quite frustrating but hope does prevail.

The alternate to getting your car all the way to the gold souk is coming by metro. The Ras al Khor station is the one that is for Gold souk. Its a five minutes walk away and totally hassle free. I often recommend my friends to park in city center and take the metro from there and come, though you are limited to do your work/shopping/ browsing within a four hour time frame before you have to pay for your city center parking.

Hope this post was helpful.

Happy parking :)