Another bad night’s sleep – the bed was rock hard. We went
down to brekkie and again I fancied a cup of coffee but it was not to be.
Hotels in Uzbekistan don’t seem to have catering coffee machines. They have the
sort of thing you have in your house which is all very well when you are making
one cup of coffee. But taking over a minute to make one cup and a queue of dozens
of people didn’t work for me.
As we breakfasted so one of our number, a particularly posh
old lady, commented on my tattoos and asked if I’d been in the merchant navy.
We took a coach trip to the other side of town and walked
back to the hotel slowly. As we walked we visited The Ark – a huge fort,
and called in to mosques (shoes off – shoes on). Our guide Fax knew
several market traders and they chatted with us in passable English, and we
visited a traditional carpet shop who gave us tea whilst they gave us a
mini-demonstration and talk.
As we walked Fax explained that people weren’t staring at
us because we were English – they were staring at him. Being with Titan holidays
(a subsidiary of Saga) our guide was holding up a huge “Titan”
banner so we could see where he was. Apparently “Titan” is Uzbek for “Viagra”.
We went back to the hotel where we were left to our own
devices for the afternoon. We sparked up the geocaching map to give us a guided
tour and we found two caches, watched a cat jumping a stream and had three ice
creams before going back to the hotel for an hour’s sleep.
There is a phrase about getting your knickers in a twist. Somehow
or other “er indoors TM” got her bra in a knot. But
with knot untangled we were on our way to a local restaurant where we had a
little cooking masterclass and then the best meal of the trip so far. Plov isn’t
bad really.
We walked back to the hotel. Despite it being late evening all
the market stalls were still open.
We got back to the hotel where we had a quick gin and
tonic, then fought with the Internet.
And having established a connection we swore at the news
from home. The plan for the week was that Morgan and Bailey would stay with the
first fruit of my loin for the first week, and then a friend from Dog Club would
have them for the second. Having dropped the pups off, after half an hour “My
Boy TM” got a phone call to come and collect them.
Apparently Bailey had attacked their dog (seriously?) and their eight
year old daughter was terrified. He’d gone back to see the eight-year-old
playing with them, the husband of the family demanding that the dogs go, and
the woman who’d offered to take them was nowhere to be seen.
The reason for the dogs going to a second place for the
second week was that “My Boy TM” and Cheryl had
things to do and were off on holiday themselves.
With no possibility of cutting our holiday short (there’s
only two flights a week from Uzbekistan to the UK and we were four hundred
miles from the airport) we frantically messaged all over the place, but
Cheryl decided that it was too much stress for the pups and they cancelled
their holiday, with a friend from Dog Club dog-sitting when Cheryl had a couple
of appointments.
I
took a few photos today… I do that.
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