We took the Sharq express train from Samarkand to Bokhara. The train is comfortable and quite fast, but all the carriages have Uzbek television playing the whole time with the volume turned up really loud - enough to give a headache. I was so glad I bought a good MP3 player and then bought a good pair of noise reducing earphones - I wore them for the whole 3 hour trip. This was much betther than the 4 hour trip from Tashkent to Samarkand when I forgot to keep the earphones handy and could not use the MP3 player.
Bokhara is a much smaller and quieter city than Samarkand and the old town is fairly separate from the new part. The old town is an arabic-style place, with narrow streets and walk-ways and lots of old buildings leaning into the street. It is so much like the old town in Cordoba. The old monumental buildings are the same design as in Samarkand and the Alhambra in Granada. Most of them have been renovated by the Russians during the soviet period, so they are in quite good condition even though they are quite old. It is like being in an Arabic tale from 1001 nights.
Lian Choo went to a Hammam today that is 600 years old. She was there for one and a half hours - they gave her a massage, bath, scrub, sauna - she loved it.
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