Best Eastern Orient Star Samarkand

Samarkand last day<br><br>Monday October 19, 2009<br><br> Our last full day of touring and it has been excellent, with the yurt camp exception. Definitely need to return with my husband so he can see all this stuff and also so we can see some of the places that we had to miss on this trip. I do know that coming in summer is NOT an option as the place is sweltering then. October seemed to be a good month.<br><br> We ...

CARPETS!!!!!!<br><br>Sunday October 18, 2009<br><br> One of our tour members really wanted to buy a carpet. We had looked in Bukhara and I had gone back with him to the shop for a second time to see if I could help him with my vast carpet buying experience (remember, 3 from Turkmenistan, 2 from Turkey, 1 from India and 1 from China) plus I figured I could get something vicariously out of helping him and ...

... a couple is totally decorated on the front with magnificent tiles and mosaics in some cases, mostly majolica tiles which were fired at a very high temperature so they got brilliant colors. Mostly they are blue but some yellows some greens and some blacks and an occasional red pops in here and there. They are all beautiful. He had showed us on a mosque earlier how to read Allah in the Arabian script. It looks kind of ...

... we, with my agreement, stay at his home.<br> A doctor friend is called to look at my leg. We all gather round in the living room. Plastic bags are fetched to put under my leg. No, it's not broken and the wound is dressed again with help from all and sundry.<br> Friends come to support Rustam. His wife produces fantastic food for everybody and Ziyodullo, Abdullo and I share mats on the floor of a bedroom.

... a more realistic policeman another time!<br><br>Our dinner at Minzifa in Bukhara had been Sim's &#8220;romantic treat&#8221; to me, so it was my turn to repay the favour here in Samarkand. Luckily the guidebook had mentioned a small cafe directly opposite the Registan that did decent food, and as the sun sank below the blue and cream tiled facades of the medressas I thought I'd get my payback. As we approached the restaurant we were met by a lady who told us that the entire ...

... the unmentionables with such startling speed and ferocity that I had to make a dash for the nearest hotel. What happened next is best not published, needless to say it was not pretty &#8211; matters were made worse by somehow managing to lock myself in the smallest cubicle of all time.<br><br>I should point out at this point that I'm not the only one suffering, the toilets of Central Asia are taking quite a battering from Dave and Damien also as our stomachs struggle to adjust....<br><br><br>

... 35 years. Earthquakes later flattened most of the city and Bukhara took over as the capital for a while. The Russians occupied the city in the 1860s and started rebuilding. Have a look at Wiki and others for pictures of the before and after pictures of the restorations.<br><br>Once the home of over 100 palaces, only a few remain. Those that do are spectacular and truly bring a lump to your throat, but more about this later. <br><br>We drove through beautiful well ...

... chambers. We were treating this seriously as we knew we would be quizzed when we came out. It was however somewhat disconcerting to hear the snoring and loud knuckle cracking of one of the watchmen who sat in the corner of our chamber. Try as we might it was impossible to meditate. How he managed to snore and simultaneously crack his knuckles we would never know. <br><br>And so our day ended some nine hours after we began. It was a wonderful tour but we were by then in a state of collapse!

... in days and thoroughly enjoyed a meal at the lovely restaurant Staraya Arba. The next night we tried Platan and the following night the Venezia. We agree that the first and last restaurants were our favourite places to eat, with great atmosphere and fine food. <br><br>We understood that it is difficult to negotiate a taxi in Uzbekistan so we opted to walk there and back to these restaurants. After, we had been walking all day and another four or five ...

... something of an illusion.<br>Out of town the countryside devolves into small farming communities, the scenery's pretty ordinery, generally flat, and we begin to doze, a combination of travelling and heat making us sleepy.<br>After a detour to avoid crossing into Kazakhstan, Didi asks us if we would like some melon, there have been people selling melons at many points along the road a melon sounded just the thing. We stopped at a crossroads where ...