I had a rather good night’s sleep which was something of a
result. And a (relatively) very good brekkie too.
We did our packing. Having moved the tea tray to the floor
because there was no plug anywhere within reach of the kettle’s power cable, as
we had a last-minute check of the room we discovered the kettle’s extension cable.
We took our cases to the hotel’s lobby. The coach took us
to more mausoleums, then leaving us behind set off with the cases on the road
back to Tashkent taking a seven hour journey. We stayed for another day in Samarkand.
The mausoleums were good if you like mausoleums. If you don’t
then (quite frankly) you’ve no business being in Uzbekistan.
From the mausoleums we walked up to the market. We were
warned to be careful of gypsies in the market. Apparently they hypnotize you
and rob you. We took no chances and walked up the road where we found a rather
good little café. They offered Big Macs and probably will continue to do so
until the McDonalds corporation get wind of them. We had a chicken skewer each
and a couple of glasses of pop, and change out of a fiver.
We all met up again after dinner and walked along an avenue
of conker trees. Who would have thought they had conker trees in Samarkand? We
went on to Registan Square
where we admired the madrasahs and then had a little wander around. I found a
stall selling raspberry milk shakes. before setting off for dinner. Yet another
traditional Uzbek dinner. It has to be said that by this stage I would have
killed for pie and chips.
And with dinner scoffed we aid goodbye to Samarkand. At the
risk of seeming negative, Samarkand was something of a disappointment. When I
was a lad, adventure comics painted Samarkand as a far-off land of mystery and
intrigue where the likes of James Bond did derring-doo with Johnny Foreigner.
In reality Samarkand isn’t any different from any other
city.
We went to the train station which was something of an
adventure. Having been promised tickets on the Shark Train
it turned out there weren’t any tickets available, so we took the standard
train back to the first hotel in which we’d stayed in Tashkent.
We got to bed shortly after one o’clock.
I took
a few photos today. I do that.
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