So we had a little stress at the beginning of the trip to Tashkent. We arrived at the London airport about 4 hours early to collect our luggage from the Excess Baggage Company where we left it upon our arrival in London. (This was expensive but well worth NOT having to lug 4 suitcases through the London Underground.) As soon as we stepped into the departures area to check with for our flight, I realized that I had left our passports and a bunch of cash in the safe in our hotel room. I was very lucky that my husband had decided to come with us to London and was staying a few more days in the hotel so it wasn’t a catastrophe. He immediately hopped back on the Tube to take the hour ride back to central London to retrieve the money and our passports from the room. My son and I spent an anxious 2 1/2 hours hanging out in the terminal by the ticket counter waiting for him to return. in the end we had just enough time to check-in, get through security, and even grab a quick snack before boarding our 6pm flight to Tashkent. Thank God we were so early and that my husband was with.
The boarding process for the flight went smoothly as the flight was only about half full. That meant my son and I had a window seat and an aisle seat with no one in between us. This was a much appreciated bonus after the stress of earlier in the day. The flight was smooth and we even got to watch a movie in English, Jumanji. There was no in-seat entertainment. Instead the plane had the drop down screens about every 4 rows. My son, who is an experienced traveler already, commented about the dated look of the plane. It really was like flying 20 years ago. But everything was in good repair and they gave us a ton of food. We were even able to get a few hours of sleep on the 7 hour long flight.
We arrived in Tashkent at 5:50am local time. Since it was so early the airport terminal was empty except for our flight. We only had to wait a few minutes at passport control to get our visas checked and our passports stamped. We made over to baggage claim before the bags had even started coming out. We had been there for only a minute or two before a man from the US Embassy come up to greet us. He introduced himself and gave us an emergency contact info card from the embassy in case we ever need it. Once our luggage came out he helped us get all our bags out of the airport and to a waiting minivan. In total we must have spent only 20 or less in the Tashkent airport. He drove us to our hotel and came inside to make sure we got checked in okay. I have never had such an easy arrival in any foreign country before. This could not have been any easier.
Out first impressions of Tashkent are that it is very clean and quite pretty. We’ve stayed pretty close to the hotel so there is much more to see but what we have seen is beautiful. The building are mainly white tile or marble with decorative accents. Today we ventured into a grocery store to buy bottled water and notice that the walkway into the store was fancy marble with decorative tiles every few steps. The floor inside the market was similar.
We also spent a few hours at the Amir Timur Museum. This place was stunning. The exhibits were interesting historical items from mainly the 1400’s. We saw old weapons, pottery, tapestries and a variety of other items. But the real beauty was in the building itself. Its hard to describe in words so I’m just gonna leave a few photos here, which really don’t do it justice.
We are spending the rest of the day hanging out at the hotel. We are going to hit the fitness center and then relax in the pool for a bit. Tomorrow we go apartment hunting!
Experience Fulbright 