25 September 2024
(Wednesday) - Samarkand
Hotel
(Grand Superior) to Observatory (Coach) – 10 miles
Observatory
to St Daniel’s Tomb (Coach) – 2 miles
St
Daniel’s Tomb to Afrasiyab Museum (Coach) – 2 miles
Afrasiyab
Museum to Hotel (Grand Superior) (Coach) – 10 miles
I
think in retrospect I’d done our hotel a disservice. Having decided that the
place was “Guest House Paradiso” last night wasn’t helped by a
dreadfully hot night and having to unplug an incredibly noisy fridge at three
o’clock in the morning.
I wasn’t in the best of moods when I came down for
brekkie. The waiter asked if I would like coffee. Yes please - I would. Would I
like americano, espresso, Montevideo, arseacheandchipso…
I wanted a cup of coffee. A cup. With coffee in it. Was that so much to ask?
Clearly it was, so I contented myself with some fruit juice and sulked.
My opinion of the hotel wasn’t helped when we got on
the coach and were asked who was it who’d paid the previous night’s drinks bill
on their Visa card; apparently it might have been anyone.
Again all twenty-seven of us piled onto the coach and
after a few minutes we were at the observatory of Ulugh Beg. We did all the
touristy things, then once we had a few minutes to ourselves I slipped
off to find a geocache. Having
solved the puzzle weeks ago and having being presented with a picture of the
location I saw it was behind a wall. I hopped on to the wall and tried to look
inconspicuous as I searched. A nearby market trader came over, smiled, reached
over the wall and handed me the geocache.
I bought a T-shirt from him; I felt I owed him that
much.
From here we went on to the tomb of St Daniel. According to Wikipedia the
tomb is in Iran, but the Uzbeks
would disagree. Apart from some religious chap howling, the place was
rather interesting; it was a shame that we were supposed to believe that the
Pope of the Greek Orthodox Church had resurrected a nearby tree, but there it
is.
We piled back on to the coach and made our way to
another museum of dull bits of broken pots where we had a video show. And once
I’d slept through that we had a few minutes free time to get over-excited bout the dull bits of broken pots. AS no one was watching I
nipped over the road for geocachical reasons.
Pausing only briefly to visit a winery (this is a
Muslim country, you know!) we had a very good bit of dinner. Well… to be
honest the dinner was just the same as pretty much every meal we’ve had here,
but the location was rather good. A very posh ornate restaurant. Just how I
always envisioned Samarkand as being.
And with dinner scoffed we went on to Amir Timur’s
mausoleum, The Uzbeks get very over-excited about mausoleums; far too
over-excited if you ask me.
With mausoleum visited we had some free time. We went
for a little walk again guided by local geocaches. It was good to walk round
seeing the locals. One of them stopped me and pointed at my water bottle and
jabbered. I replied that I didn’t understand him. On hearing I was English he
asked if I had whisky in my water bottle, and could he please have some.
Another success for my idiot magnet.
Our dinner was in a local restaurant. Apparently a
rather posh local restaurant, but apart from the birthday cake served up for
one of our number whose birthday it was, the food really wasn’t anything
special.
We came back to the hotel. With twenty-three of our
number off to bed, four of us had a little drinkie ion the bar. No gin and
tonic, but a brandy and lemonade was every bit as good. Or would have been had
there been any lemonade.
Sprite is an acceptable substitute… isn’t it?
I took a few
photos of the day as I do.