Day 7

Since we woke up early,  we decided to go at 6 am for a walk in the old city. At that time it was nice and cool and streets were almost empty.  In the daylight it was easy to find the Chor Minor mosque.  It as a cute little mosque.  We walked a little around the old town and discovered several lovely hotels, some in converted madrasas. Then back to hotel for breakfast. Our tour bus took us to several MMM,( mosque, madrasa, mausoleum). They are all getting to look the same. We also visited the emir of Bukhara’s summer palace from the 19^th century and the family burial places. Lunch was in a nice restaurant in the old town called Old Bukhara and consisted of the usual 4 courses + bread. Every day, we get pretty much the same lunch and dinner ensemble: salads (usually 2-3 different salads, most really tasty and creative) followed by soup followed by the main course (often shashlik=shish kebab of different kinds of meat) followed by desert (sometimes fruit, more often pastry and/or ice cream). The amount of food is way more than we can eat. This orgy is repeated twice a day every day. Even if we walk 10 miles a day, we probably can’t burn all these calories. After a big and delicious lunch. we continued our walk through old Bukhara – through three domes of bazaars, carpet presentation to the most picturesque square called Poi-i-Kalon. We did all this in 90+F heat.

We had dinner in a private house of an artist and his wife who taught Uzbek embroidery (suzann) at the local university. The house was 270 years old and gorgeous. They were in the process of renovating it with plans to turn it into a B&B. The man cooked plov (a traditional Uzbek rice pilaf) for us.