Officially the sightseeing portion of the day was done and I now had the rest of the evening until tomorrow noon as freetime in Samarkand before my tour resumed. The first thing on the agenda was a long anticipated trip to the music CD store.The store was in the modern area close to my hotel. As this was my driver Anvar's hometown he suggested this would be the best place to buy all the cds I wanted.They had a large selection of hollywood movies in Russian, other...

Our final scheduled stop for the day on a very busy day touring Samarkand was back to the Kazret Khyzr Mosque opposite the Bibi Khanum complex. I didnt see the point of visiting as I'd taken a zoom pic from when we were at Bibi Khanum and didnt expect to see anything special in "just another Mosque".What was interesting though was the outer terrace with panorama views looking back over the mountains and Bibi Khanum complex. This is a good place to come at high el...

Our next stop which was not part of the tour but which I asked to be included since we kept passing right in front of it was the Afrosiab archaeological site. This is quite a vast area whose exact size I'm not sure of. I wasnt interested in exploring the site but only visiting the museum which was easy to get to.Afrosiab was a thriving Sogdian settlement dating back to the 5th century BC. It was visited by Alexander the Great and absorbed into his empire. Finally...

Next on a very busy day, but almost done, exploring Samarkand we drove to the Uleg Beg Observatory. This was only recently excavated by the Soviets and sadly the inventor was not appreciated during his time and he was murdered.Close to the Afrosiab archaeological site which covers a large part of the city, the observatory was perched on top of a hill. There is the original excavated pit and a newly built museum beside.I'm not quite sure of the mechanics of how th...

Our next stop was the complex of Royal Tombs known as Shah-i-Zindah. These were many of the aristocrats, noble families, and royal persons. I'm not sure if they know the identity of all the tombs now.From street level I didnt know what to expect. You can see a couple of domes but by this point there were domes everywhere.First you go up a long staircase which brings you to an archway. Once going thru the archway there is a street lined with tombs.The street is no...