We had a rude awakening this morning by a tiny intruder in our bed at 5AM. She violently cuddled us until 6 but refused to go back to sleep. She cried when we wouldn’t let her see her iPad, and then eventually passed out from 7 to 9:56AM. We woke her up to make it to breakfast before it closed at 10. We ate a huge amount, showered, and set out for the day.

We had a lot of sightseeing of “old stuff” on the itinerary. We first walked about 25 minutes to see Shah-I-Zinda, a beautiful and sacred necropolis. We had a bit of a hard time getting to it because the whole of old Samarkand has walls surrounding it. We could see it but couldn’t figure out how to get out of the walls and through the private residences. Millie wore a headscarf to fit in with many of the women here.

Eventually we got there and climbed up to see the beautiful buildings. I was so inspired by the tile work and colors. Once again, adding to the list of inspiration for a future home.

Here’s a photo Millie took of me and Nick, and what we saw while she took it.

From here we cut through the cemetery behind it to get to the museum. I loooove walking through cemeteries, and especially love the tradition of putting portraits on the graves.

We got to the museum and did a quick walk around. We have been so spoiled by ruins and world class museums that this one didn’t feel too special. I realize how bad that sounds.

At this point we had walked a ton and it was very hot, so we hopped in a Yandex to our next destination of the Bibi-Khanym mosque. We were all a bit hungry so ducked into a cafe and ordered some bread and a delicious little salad. The waiter was very confused that this was all we wanted. The produce here has been excellent, just look at how red the tomatoes are.

We went across the street to visit the mosque. It’s hard to capture the scale in photos. It was so, so tall and intricate. Millie had fun running around with her ribbon toy and Nick and I had fun watching her. This thing has been the best $2 I’ve ever spent.

She made me laugh pretending to be really into the history Nick was reading to us. She kept saying “oh wow! Cool! Tell me more!”

Deep down I know some of it is sinking in, and she likes it, just like I do even though I also make fun of him.

We walked back to our hotel to briefly rest before dinner. We took yet another walk and got to sit on a terrace overlooking the main square. We ordered more Uzbek specialties: dumplings, samsa (like samosas), and noodles. The dumplings were so good that we ordered not one but two more bowls of them. Millie scarfed them down.

The sun went down and we made our way back to the hotel. Yet another late night, but hopefully will not result in a 5am wake up!