Tashkent. Day 17

 A fairly full day, seeing all of the usual and compulsory sights. Fortunately the hotel has a good buffet breakfast to set us up. I didn't take that many photos. Enough for this blog I suppose, so I'm not exactly on strike. But I am questioning whether you can tell one mosque from another.

Anyway, let's get started. First stop was a memorial to the 1966 earthquake. This was obviously in the soviet era, so the memorial is very much in that style.


Next we went to a large plaza with a number of buildings - a mosque, a madrasa (which is now taken over by shops selling embroidery, earrings, pictures), a library which has a very old Koran, and the Centre for Islamic Civilisation. The last of these is enormous and has a world record for the biggest something. But I'm not going to show you a picture because if you have read any of my other blogs you can imagine what it'll look like.
So we'll move on to the Chorsu Bazaar. A large, old market with huge piles of fruit, vegetables, spices and meats. Again, not especially new. But some of it is in a huge soviet era dome. Also we got to see them making bread in very large tandooris and there was a large street food area devoted to various types of shaslicks. In the dome itself most of the ground floor was butchers. A slight problem as Lynn's stomach is going through a delicate stage on this part of the trip.

Next stop was a handicrafts museum which was really very good. Things we've seen before, but particularly good examples of all of them.
Finally we decended into the underground railway system. Modelled on the Russian ones the stations are all themed and decorated - we entered at the cosmonaut station, changed lines at one dedicated to a poet, and got out at the 1980 Moscow Olympics station.
Kosmonavtlar Station

This meant we could go up to the city square, where there is a statue of Timur.

By then it was late in the afternoon and in the low 30s, so we were happy to be dropped back at the hotel.
After dark. Central Asia loves Ferris Wheels


Location: 1 A, Navoiy shoh ko'chasi, Тоshkent, Toshkent, Uzbekistan

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