Trip to Uzbekistan Part 4 - Tashkent

Our taxi's picked us up at 6:00 a.m. to take us to the train station.  We got there and through security and waited for about thirty minutes until we boarded the train to Tashkent.  We were on a train from Russia that looked like it was full of workers coming back to visit home.  The train was old and soviet style, so we felt right at home.  Our trip was about five hours, so we laid down and rested and had snacks  while we traveled. 

Waiting for the train.

When we got to Tashkent, we unloaded our bags.  Our rolling bag's wheels were broken.  We think the taxi driver broke the wheels when he was loading it.  The bag has been with us since our first year in Kazakhstan.  We've taken it back and forth to the US at least once a year, to southeast Asia a number of times, to Europe (multiple times), to Russia three times, and to Georgia and Uzbekistan. I also used it on most of my conference trips to the US.  That bag has some miles on it!

It meant that it had to be carried, which was a job.  We took the subway and then walked to our hotel.  It was about a mile worth of walking, so it was plenty of exercise.  Our hotel was on a side street and was very nice.  It was the most like a real hotel of all the places we stayed.

We needed to get money to pay for food and stuff, but had a devil of a time finding an ATM that worked to dispense money.  Bukhara was nice in that sense.  There were only a couple of ATMs, but they all worked with foreign cards to dispense money.  In Tashkent, there were only a few that accepted cards other than the local ones.  We did finally have success getting the money we needed, though.

Outside our hotel.

We decided to go the "Harry Potter" cafe for dinner.   The decorations were nice and the food was yummy.  It was the most expensive place we ate the whole time we were traveling, but we had a lot of fun and the kids loved it.  We also got dessert for Yulia's birthday a few days earlier, so win-win!

Harry Potter cafe.  Salads for the grown ups.

Kids getting their food in fancy bowls.

Dessert!!!!

Saturday morning we started exploring Tashkent.  We started at the orthodox cathedral, the seat of the orthodox church in Central Asia.  It was interesting to compare it with the mosques we had been visiting.

Cathedral

We walked from the cathedral to an outdoor train museum. The museum had a lot of old soviet steam engine trains that you could climb up on and around.  My great grandfather was a machinist for the Union Pacific railroad and worked on the big steam engines (later diesel) so it was fun to show the kids around the trains.

Starting our train adventure.

After we had seen the trains, we got on the metro and went to the "Plov Center" to eat.  We had heard from our friends that it was the place to go.  We were not disappointed.  The scale of cooking was really impressive, and the restaurant was highly efficient, very cheap, and built to serve thousands at a time.  It was our cheapest meal and nobody left hungry.  We had nice salad, some bread, and a big dish of plov and some horse sausage (something we are very acquainted with from Kazakhstan.)

One of the many big vats where they cooked plov.

The main dining room (it was full, so we were taken to the overflow.)

Eating plov in the overflow.  Notice we also had a regular boiled egg and a quail egg as well!

Plov, in all its glory!!!

After we had our yummy plov meal, we took the metro to the main "Chorsu" bazaar.  Lina and Lexa both got their souvenirs there from a guy.  We had an interesting conversation about religion with the man who was selling.  The bazaar itself was huge and a bit overwhelming (especially for me), but we turned out okay.

We headed back to the hotel on the metro.

Sunday morning we took two taxis to the airport, checked in, and flew home without incident.  We arrived in Kazakhstan and took the bus home where we found that all was well.  Yuki had gotten a tick while we were gone, but Yana, one of my basketball team girls who was watching her, had seen it and gotten her to the vet without problems.

We had a wonderful time in Uzbekistan. Yulia had been a bit leery about going, but ended up very glad that we went.  It was a unique opportunity.  We are more likely to get to Europe again, but we may not have more chances to spend time in Central Asia.