This trip may be detrimental to well-fitting pants. You see, our hotel room came equipped with a bathroom scale. Thank goodness it is in kilos because I weigh half what I thought I did. However, and this is a really big however, I weighed myself in the morning and then by bedtime I weighed 1.55 kilos more than in the morning, and my (apparently) fat sister weighed 2 kilos more. That means she put on approximately 4 pounds in a 14 hour period. And we didn’t even eat any of our purse snacks or backpack snacks yesterday!

If you read about the typical food of Uzbekistan, you will be nodding your head saying, yep that is some thetwinsontour food for sure. Uzbekistan is double land locked so they don’t really eat seafood (hallelujah!). They do eat a lot of lamb though which I managed to avoid so far.

After breakfast we went on a city tour starting out with a visit to the oldest Koran in the world. It was written in the 7th century on deer skin paper which has evidently shrunk over time. It is still huge though. The remaining pages that haven’t been pilfered over the past 1,400 years weigh about 35 kilos. It’s not like an illuminated manuscript with little drawings and fancy letters. It’s just writing that no one can read anymore.

Guess what we did after that? If you said eat, you are wrong despite the 2 kilo clue above. We went shopping! An hour into the day and we got to stimulate the Uzbek economy. Heavenly! My sister picked out this gorgeous silk scarf with camel hair wool applique flowers (forgot to get a picture yet) that she will probably never, ever wear and cost too much money. You know I hate it when she gets something nice and I don’t, so I picked out one too. We also got some very affordable hand painted earrings for only 60,000 Som (about $5.64 based on the current exchange rate.) Don’t worry, I bought several pair! And we bought hand painted magnets, so I don’t have to spend the rest of the trip looking for the perfect magnet for my collection. I probably still will because that’s what I do, but I don’t HAVE to.

After this we made a quick tour of the Bazar (think food markets with veggies, spices, raw meat…) Did you know that you can buy horse meat at the market? Slightly appalling. Luckily I don’t think that Mr. Ed will be part of any of our dinner plans. We did buy a meat pie (beef don’t worry) that was absolutely delicious except for that large piece of gristle I couldn’t chew or swallow. That deliciousness was only 12,000 Som or $1.13. What a deal! And we split that. Our money will go far in Uzbekistan so long as we can avoid the silk camel wool scarves! Did I mention that I am a millionaire? Yes, that’s right. A millionaire. I did not win the Powerball. This was much easier. All I had to do was visit the ATM in the hotel lobby. I pulled out 2,000,000 Som. Yes, 2 million! And it only cost me $188! But I digress. Where was I?

Oh we also went to the bakery where they bake the bread in fire powered brick ovens. Somehow they get the bread to stick to the sides and roof of the oven to bake. It’s just plain bread with flour, yeast, salt. The bakers are pretty fond of selfies. And I only saw 2 pigeons flying around in there, so that’s a good thing. Oh and bread has to be torn by hand. You can’t cut bread with a knife. There’s a lot of other bread rules that I have already forgotten because I wasn’t paying that much attention (because I was busy taking selfies.)

After that we got to ride on the World Famous Tashkent subway. It’s not very deep because of the ground water levels, but the stations are all pretty ornate with different tiles in each one. We only went to two stations though. And the subway tickets cost about 13cents. Yes, 13 cents. Unbelievable! I am pretty sure you are supposed to wear masks on public transportation, but we were some of the few people following the rules.

There was also a quick museum thrown in there before lunch. If you are thinking that is a lot to do before lunch, keep in mind that we didn’t eat lunch until after 3pm. We had some salads, grilled eggplant (yum, yum, yum), and kebab meat, lava cake and ice cream. I didn’t do a good job of food pictures yesterday. Apologies.

After that, we needed a nap before dinner at 7. But dinner, that was scrumptious. I cleaned my plate! Rice and shaved beef with onions. So tender, and no gristle like in the dollar meat pies.

Anyways, I am now realizing that I don’t have enough adjectives to be a successful culinary blogger, but at least my mother knows I got enough to eat today. You know she worries about that.

Good night from Uzbekistan.

Love,

thetwinsontour