(Fair warning, this will be a long post with a lot of pictures… there was a lot to see today.) Our time on Saaremaa ended this morning and we headed for Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. We again had to take the ferry, which is thankfully only a 20 minute ride. Once we arrived in Tallinn, we hit the ground running, which seems to be the only way we know how to...
Hard to believe, but we just passed the halfway point of our trip. That said, we aren’t slowing down!! We started the morning off with a brisk walking tour of Riga Old Town, led by local ‘Rita from Riga’. Brisk because it was 38 degrees out, sans windchill. Thanks to the buildings and the architecture, Riga Old Town has a Unesco designation, and is absolutely amazing...
(Fair warning… We’ll probably inundate you with pictures, as there was a lot seen on this day.) Klaipeda was a cool town, and we would spend more time here given the chance! We stayed at the Old Mill Hotel, on the water and across a swing bridge. Here are some shots of the Inn along with adjacent buildings. As we were packing up the van to head out, one of the two...
We are winding down our time left in Uzbekistan. It is now Day 11 – our first full day in Samarkand. For those that read yesterday’s blog (Day 10), you might remember one of the last pictures that was of a beautifully arranged fruit tray, and how we said we’d come back to this tray… Well we’re back to it. The consensus is that it was possibly...
Ah, a fresh new day in Bukhara, Day 8. We were also told that today was the start of their “Silk & Spice Festival”, which is a 3-day long local festival, therefore places might be a little more crowded than we’d been used to. We walked to the bus, on which we headed for the Bakhaouddin Naqshbandi Memorial Complex (also called Bahoutdin Architectural...
Okay, today’s blog will be fairly short, picture sparse, and yea… boring. Today was the day we embarked on the long bus ride to Bukhara, roughly an all day drive. There were a few high points, such as when we pulled over at a high point where we could see nearby Turkmenistan, but all-in-all, a fairly boring drive through the desert. That green area on the other side...
This is the day we bade farewell to the lovely city of Tashkent, flying to the western city of Urgench. Flying domestically was…interesting. Airport security was this…. Place everything on the conveyor – suitcase, carry-on, breakfast – and then walk through the detector. Wait…breakfast?? Yep, people put their sack breakfasts and drink on the...