Day Seven

Our hotel is located right at the central square in Bukhara, we're surrounded by mosques and other old buildings as soon as we exit the hotel lobby.

There are a lot of stalls selling all kinds of souvenirs, they are mostly visited by Uzbeki people and the vendors generally don't try to force their goods onto you. This makes for a very relaxing walk through the city center.

This is the scene seen in most tourist guides for Bukhara, it used to be two "Medrese", Arabic for educational institution, but now are two souvenir shops.

It's a sunday and that means a lot of the locals are out and about, there are also busloads of school children from other parts of the country, making the place very lively.

A short walk over is a square with the "Kalan Mosque" and the "Mir-I-Arab Madrasa", flanked by the "Great Minaret of the Kalon".

You have to pay an 8000 SOM entrance fee for the Mosque and another 2000 SOM if you want to take pictures with a camera (Phones are free). It's well worth the price.

The tree is a white mulberry tree.

As soon as you step into the Mosque it's nice and quiet, the weather was great too, with 24 degrees celcius and a nice breeze.

From the square we followed the crowds to the next attraction, the "Ark", a 5th century fortress now housing museums and you have to pay 15.000 SOM per person to enter.

The throne where you can sit in costume did especially well.

Across from the Ark is the "Bolo Hauz Mosque". It's an active mosque still used today, the pillars look really nice.

From the mosque we went back to the hotel for a change of clothes and lunch as it was becoming quite hot. As soon as we stepped out of the restaurant (where we ate Chicken in Soy sauce) it started raining, though it was light enough to continue in a t-shirt. As is becoming tradition on this trip we visited an old (Soviet) amusement park that was well visited.

The reason we went to the amusement park is there was a gate in the, what was, the outer wall. The gate looks pretty cool, the view 180 degrees is a mall parking lot...

The rain was getting worse, so we headed back to the hotel to upload some photos, drink a beer and get ready for dinner.

Before heading to the restaurant we visited one last Mosque, "Chor Minor".