Over the last month we’ve visited all 5 “stans” in Central Asia and today is the official last day of our time here.

Sure, the trip continues for a few more days as we head home through first Istanbul tomorrow and then Paris the next day, but today is the last day in this region of the world.

So, despite both of us being somewhat travel fatigued, we got out there and did a little exploring of Uzbekistan’s largest city Tashkent.

A very late breakfast

Now, I’m pretty sure I’m more fatigued than Nathan cause he was up and about at 6am this morning while I staying comfortably in my bed until 9:30.

I told Nathan to go on without me for breakfast as I got ready and I’d join him after breakfast to go exploring.

After my morning routine and finishing up yesterday’s blog, I was out the door late at 11am.

A quick Yandex ride later (their version of Uber) and I was sitting at a patio table with Nathan as he was finishing up his meal.

He must have been hungry because he had ordered two different dishes and half of his second dish was still sitting in front of him.

He was full and offered me the rest of his rolled up omelette and I happily took it.

It was the perfect sized breakfast for me as I really wasn’t all the hungry.

Pesky Tajik Currency

After breakfast we decided to give one last ditch effort at exchanging our pesky Tajik currency.

Similar to the issues we had last week with exchanging Kyrgyz money, we were running into the same problem with our leftover money from Tajikistan.

Nobody will take it.

Not banks.   Not currency exchanges.   Not at the airport.

And not even at the currency exchange I use back home that takes everything.

Nope, we were basically walking around with expensive souvenirs.

We tried three different banks and they all turned us away.

Okay, okay, we get it – Tajik currency is persona non grata.

The Railway Museum

After our futile attempt to exchange our cash we finally gave up and popped over to the nearby Railway Museum.

Now I’m not much of a museum guy but this was no ordinary museum.

Instead of a building with displays inside, it was a collection of old Soviet locomotives and train cars set up outside.

Aside from us there were just a handful of other people walking around the old train cars so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves.

It was cool to just stroll through what is basically an old train graveyard and snap shots of trains from yesteryear.

Cosmonaut Station

There is a station on the metro line called Kosmonavtlar which is a tribute to both Soviet and now Russian space travel.

Inside the station itself are murals of various cosmonauts and even a special appearance by Icarus who, for all intents and purposes, was truly the first cosmonaut out there as he just flew too close to the sun.

Above the station is a monument celebrating Russia and Uzbekistan’s cosmonaut legacy.

It was, honestly, just a cool little thing to do in the middle of the day and I’m glad we took the time to explore it.

Lunch in the park

At 2pm we took the metro back to the area we’re staying since right across the street from our hostel is the Adiblar Xiyoboni park.

Half of the park is dedicated to writers and poets with over a dozen prominent statues of influential Uzbeks who are revered in those fields.

The other half is the Magic City theme park and, like with every other theme park we’ve seen on this trip. the place was deserted.

Just us, a few other people, and a bunch of ride and booth attendants just standing around.

Don’t get me wrong, I expected that.

In fact, truth be told, I wanted to just have a nice leisurely walk through an empty park sheltered somewhat from the sun.

There’s three things that ground me when I’m traveling and that’s cats, ice cream, and walks through parks.

And I got all three of them today so, yeah, it was a good day today.

At the end of the theme park is a selection of about a dozen different restaurants to choose from for lunch.

Amazingly Burger King and Wendys were two of those restaurants.

I was shocked to see either of them since we hadn’t seen any western fast food joint this entire trip.

By the way, McDonalds was nowhere in sight.

Anyway, we didn’t choose either of those opting for a normal restaurant across from them.

After lunch it was back to the hostel and, with it, our last bit of the 33c beating sun for this trip.

Tomorrow we’ll be in Istanbul where it’s forecast to be rainy and 18c and, honestly, I can not wait to break open my umbrella.

Bring on the rain!

Chicken dinner and another currency adventure

We relaxed in our hostel for a couple of hours and, by the time we headed back out for dinner, the sun had set.

We decided to keep it simple and just walked down the street and stop at one of the nearby restaurants.

Tonight it was Jonon Chicken which, you guessed it, specializes in chicken dishes.

Before we sat down, I made sure that there was unbreaded chicken available cause, ya know, that whole gluten allergy thing.

I got a thumbs up and we were on our way to having a chicken dinner.

My chicken came out swimming in oil.

Like, seriously, there was a pool of oil on my dish that I had to mop up.

Otherwise, the food was pretty decent.

Not the best meal to end our time down here in Central Asia with but, that’s okay because we’ll be in Istanbul tomorrow night and then Paris the following night so you know good food will be had the next couple of nights.

Oh, and the carton of mixed fruit juice I got – oh my God – I could drink that every day for the rest of my life so that is the memory I’ll take from our last meal here.

When the bill came we asked to pay by card and that’s when we were hit with yet one more final currency adventure.

They didn’t take credit cards.

And, naturally, we didn’t have enough cash left in our wallets to cover the bill.

Sigh.

I guess it’s kind of par for the course for this trip that I’d have to leave the table to walk down the street to pull out some cash from an ATM on our last night in town.

At least my bank card worked.

And, with that, the night came to a close at 9pm as we have an early wake up call of 4:30 tomorrow morning for our flight to Istanbul.

Our time in Central Asia has officially come to an end but, like I said, there’s still the journey home over the next few days and, boy oh boy, do I have something big planned for the last night!

So, see you all tomorrow as the journey home begins…