Day Twelve

The day began great, our hotel neighbour had her birthday and shared delicious cake with us, talk about a nice breakfast. We had found a walking tour that we wanted to try. To get to the start we had to take the metro.

Chorsu Market

Chorsu Market is a huge bazaar in the center of the city. The bazaar is dominated by this dome-like structure and inside is where they sell meat and nuts.

After visiting the market we had a delicious lunch with traditional Uzbeki food. Pastries filled with meat and soup. The shop owner kept bringing more and more food and with some hand gestures we managed to convince him we really had enough.

It took us a while to find the metro station at the bazaar, it's hidden somewhere in the middle.

Palace Druzhby Narodov

Next up was the "Palace Druzhby Narodov", a concert hall in Soviet style architecture.

Around the back (or front, really) is a giant square with a huge Uzbeki flag. People where relaxing on the benches and we took a break too, it's a good ~26 degrees celcius and the sun is out in full force.

From the "palace" we took the metro to the "horse man" statue for a second attempt of a photo, there were no protestors this time.

We planned to go to the "Japanese garden" near the "TV Tower" but it was hot and we kinda had a beer already and it tasted good, so we skipped the garden and headed back to the hotel to relax a bit.

With a limited budget and not wanting to hit the ATM (and it's fees) again, we had a simple, but delicious dinner at the "Burger Embassy".

The next day we had to get up early to catch our flight back to Istanbul, this time the brand new airport that they moved operations to while we were in Uzbekistan.

In-flight dinner with Turkish was delicious again. Everyone always complains about airline food, but Lufthansa, Turkish and JAL know how to do it right.

The new airport was open for just a few days, and so far the impression is that taxiing from the runway to a gate takes even longer than the dreaded "polderbaan" at Schiphol airport and after that you still have to walk a long way to get to your next gate. The airport looked great though.

And with this final leg to Dusseldorf this trip comes to an end, I'll leave you with this beautiful view of the now defunct Ataturk Airport.