When I was planning this leg of the trip through Tajikistan the itineraries were pretty barren.

Many of the days are just labeled “explore the city”.

What that means is we can just go out and explore on our own when we want.

No early morning tours.

No need to be out all day.

Just a day to go out and explore the city.

So, that’s what we did today…

But first, breakfast

We asked the man at the hostel where a good place to get breakfast was and he suggested a cafe in town that serves a “French breakfast” in his words.

Sounded good to us so we hopped in a taxi into town.

I should mention we are staying on the outskirts of the so a taxi will be our best friend while we’re here.

And, honestly, even if we were staying near the city center, we’d still need to use taxis because this city is very spread apart.

Amazingly, there were no issues with our taxi ride in unlike our taxi adventures yesterday.

The cafe was exactly where it was supposed to be.

We walked in and it quickly became apparent what a “French” breakfast was.

Pastries and baked goods.

So many pastries on every shelf.

To be sure, a French man’s dream for breakfast.

For me, a Canadian who can’t eat gluten, not so much.

We crossed the street and came upon a hotel.

Surely they’d have a breakfast buffet.

And, sure enough, we walked in and straight to the left corner were a glorious collection of metal buffet lids covering all sorts of great breakfast items.

Travel tip for you noobs out there – if you want a homestyle breakfast, hit up a hotel.

Normally these buffets are free for guests but as an outside guest you can also partake for a charge.

Usually you enter the dining room and a host will ask for your room number and if you’re an outside guest they’ll collect a payment from you.

This time though no one stopped and checked us as we went inside.

Yup, we had stumbled upon a free breakfast!

Ooooh, this is a nice way to start the day!

Touring the city

After breakfast we started a two hour trek through the city.

Dushanbe has quite a few attractions and monuments scattered throughout the city.

They are also well known for their old Soviet mosaics still on display around the city.

And I had them all marked on my offline map.

Special thanks to whoever I snagged these mosaic map points from on Reddit.

We decided to tackle most of the attractions and a few of the mosaics today and then tomorrow we’ll just search out the other mosaics.

We saw the Ayni Opera House, Rudaki Avenue and Park, the Ismoili Somoni Monument, the parliament, and finished at a little theme park on Komsomolskoe Lake right next to the Navruz Palace.

And, of course, we also searched out a few mosaics along the way too.

In total we were out in the beating sun for a good two hours and by 1pm we were both exhausted and ready to get back to the hostel to rest and reset.

Yet another taxi adventure

While we were done with our walk at 1pm, we didn’t actually get back to our hostel for another hour.

Navigating taxis here has proven to be quite a challenge and it doesn’t help that we got real spoiled with the Yandex app (their version of Uber) in all the other countries we’ve visited on this trip.

Here we have to do it old school by first waving a taxi down and then figuring out somehow to communicate with them where we want to go.

It’s not as easy as telling or even showing them an address as it really seems to stump them each time I show them on my phone.

Anyway, despite literally every second car here being a Jura taxi with a green wrap on it, it took awhile for us to finally have one pull over to pick us up.

Oh, there were already two people inside.

Guess this is one of those shared taxis.

I know I should have just said no and flagged another one down but we were tired and been trying fruitlessly for awhile to get a taxi.

So, in we went driving off into mysteriousness.

I figured since it was a shared taxi that I’d just tell him to stop at the intersection on the main road that was closest to our hostel and we’d walk the rest of the way.

Problem was that road leading to our hostel was under a bridge that we were crossing over.

I sat there in the taxi watching my little hostel map marker getting further and further away.

Finally we got let out on the side of the road and were faced with doubling back to get home.

A 20 minute walk stood in front of us and the sun was at it’s peak.

I’m not exaggerating when I say I almost passed out on the final stretch to the hostel but a brief rest and a bunch of water kept me going.

Finally, we had come back home.

It was 2pm.

Traffic mayhem going to dinner

I literally took off my shoes and just crashed in the middle of the room not even wanting to climb up to my top bunk.

After relaxing and resetting for a few hours, we headed back out for dinner at just after 5pm.

The plan was to cross our fingers and catch another taxi back across town to another restaurant I had marked on my map.

Again it took a good 10 minutes to finally get a taxi to stop for us while probably 20 of them zoomed past us.

Amazingly, the driver knew where we were headed so that was some relief.

A simple 10 minute ride into the city.

Oh, it’s rush hour.

Oh, a road is blocked off for some reason.

Oh my God, it’s traffic mayhem.

After crawling through traffic for a half hour we found ourselves at an intersection that was just a short walk to where we had dinner last night.

Technically it was just another 4 minute drive to this new restaurant but the traffic looked even heavier here.

In the end we just paid the taxi driver and got out there to revisit our restaurant from last night.

This place is rated #1 on TripAdvisor but we were the only people in there when we arrived at 6pm.

Wierd.

The place was also pretty empty last night too.

I don’t know what’s going on with TripAdvisor but I will say I was pretty content with the food both yesterday and today.

For dinner tonight I had a lamb tajin and a side of fries.

After dinner we walked down the street and hit up an ice cream joint for a little after dinner treat.

And then it was time to gamble on another taxi ride.

Amazingly the first car we saw took us in and I finally figured out the trick to getting my driver to know where we’re going.

Just give him my damn phone with the route mapped in on Google Maps.

Problem solved.

At 8pm we were back home and in for the night.

We are now in our final week of the trip so let’s end it with a bang…