Taxi to the airport and not the plane with no more than the usual hassles, and off to Samarkand.

Samarkand/Samarqand

Look for me up Al-Buhory street.

The plane arrived about 20 minutes early, so there was no one at the airport to meet me. I had to fight off the attentions of a taxi driver while I tried to call the hotel. The reception on this phone is just dreadful: I was literally shouting into it in order to make myself heard - of course it doesn't help when other people are still shouting in your ear: I had to tell him to move off.

The hotel is a large-ish two storey place which is built around a couple (at least) of courtyards. I found it a bit confusing at first, and I thought I gotten lost because the key didn't work in what I thought was my door; but I just had to be more forceful. The room's pretty crap and the bed is quite uncomfortable. I had to remake it, because they'd put the sheets on sideways, which is not uncommon. Oh well, I suppose they must do things differently in foreign countries. I think there's also a bit of a funny smell, unless that's me. I take this opportunity to send some (most) of my clothes to be cleaned.

One guy here speaks a bit of English and he's been very helpful. I made a bit of a hit with the staff here because I mentioned that I had the newest lonely planet Central Asia guide as an e-book. It gave the wrong name for their hotel, which they were surprised by, but they also were interested to see what it had to say about the hotel and about the competition. I think they were satisfied with the result, but that just makes me wonder about the standard of the rest.

The internet doesn't reach to my room very often, and when I sit in the common areas it doesn't work much anyway. This means I still can't send any pictures to Facebook or email them around or even put them on Flickr. 

01/05/2014

(Thursday)

Well, I forgot to call my parents to gloat about being in Samarkand , but I suppose there'll be time for that tomorrow.

Somehow I managed to confuse myself going out of the hotel to the Registon. Goodness knows how, because it's just right out of the doors, left and then straight on to the tourist sights. The tourist sights are pretty impressive and I got a number of very nice photos I think. It's a pity that a considerable part of the Registon is under reconstruction and is chock-a-block with construction workers and their noisy, dusty occupation. The Art Cafe nearby, which is reviewed scathingly in the LP, was actually quite good. At least it had a menu I could understand, and I made the most of it. I ate a pile there. Greek salad and plov (which is just a rice with julienned marrow, I think, and a couple of chunks of meat), then a coffee and a loaf of bread.
 

Registan

A general view of the area

The main facade

Repairs to the arch

The whole of the front is closed off to the public and is being repaired - carefully, I hope.

Repairs to the courtyard

It's a huge job.

Dome tiling

Squinches

The Art Cafe

Pretty neat place to have a cafe.

I decided it would be a good idea to get a train ticket for tomorrow to Bukhara , so I tried to find the so-called bus and marshrutkas stops listed by the guide. The first simply didn't exist, and I never saw any marshrutkas with the numbers recommended. I walked on to the Bulvar bus (not marshrutkas, mr LP!) stop and caught no. 22. I went for an hour into the wilderness and then returned to where I'd got on. Perhaps I gon on the wrong direction; I must have since the hotel guy says it definitely goes there. Anyway, I had a bit of a recovery and then caught a 15 minute, 5000 UZS taxi. So much easier. I have the ticket now for 12:30 tomorrow. That having been done, I caught the no. 3 bus back with no dramas and had a good meal in the Cafe Labig'or. But it's annoying that so much time is taken up with this stuff. From the time I started until the time I sat down for a meal was 4 hours - time that could have been much more enjoyably spent.

There's a white peahen grazing on the grass and road outside this place: and a white feather has just floated up to the 2nd floor terrace to land in my mantis! What an exotic annoyance.

I managed to get a phot uploaded to Facebook today. It was one of two turquoise domes against an azure sky. I thought it was very evocative and so I added these classic lines (ok, perhaps cliched in this context):

We travel not for trafficking alone,
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned.
For lust of knowing what should not be known,
We take the golden road to Samarkand .