Sunday, June 29, 2014
We arrived in Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s second city, around 2:30pm. The previous night we had no Internet and did not have any hotels in mind. So our plan was to head to a coffee shop, get some lattes, and Internet to find a hotel. The plan was thwarted, as ‘the’ coffee shop was closed. As we drove around planning our next move, we happened upon Hotel Nuru. We were shown a few of the deluxe rooms and since it was my birthday we decided to splurge on one of those 🙂 The mercury had been rising steadily and showed 35C, so we stayed in our air conditioned mini suite for the rest of the afternoon. That evening we did venture out for dinner and ended up in ‘Izyum Restaurant and Bar’, a rather big place but quite well done. We enjoyed a lovely birthday dinner after which we noticed that they showed the World Cup soccer (Netherlands vs Mexico) on a big screen on an outside patio. So we ordered some more beers and watched the game there.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Very lazy day in our lovely cool room. We actually moved from the ‘Japanese’ themed room to the ‘African’ themed one. We decided to stay out of the heat during the day – we’ll have enough of that in the following couple of weeks – and simply relaxed, read, played online, Stephen had a nap,…
We ventured out in the cool of the evening to Tsarkii Dvor, where we had average food and fine beer. Then we headed back to Izyum to watch France beat Nigeria. The satellite feed keep cutting out, and unfortunately we missed both goals. But the beer was good.
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Another relaxing day. We did a little route planning for Uzbekistan and the rest of the trip to Eeklo in Belgium. In fact the itinerary is working out quite well and we will be able to enjoy a few cities in Northern Europe as we head west.
We did venture out during the heat of the day to see the local attraction, which is a big rock ‘Sulaiman Too‘ in the center of town. It is a UNESCO world heritage site. Also found a bank to change some dollars so we could fill up Sterlin with fuel and provisions and pay for dinner. Cash machines do not seem to work for us here.
Dinner was at the Bridge Bar which is also a restaurant, and a fine dinner it was. And although the pub has a nicely presented decor, the place was completely empty, which was a little depressing. Ramadan had started, so maybe that was why it was empty, but we suspected people also don’t go out as much here.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Yes, we got up at 2am to watch Belgium play USA. It was an exciting game and USA gave it their all. There was one very happy Belgian in Osh!
