Thursday, June 26, 2014
We stayed at Nomad Hostel again, checking in just after lunch. In the afternoon we went for a long walk in search of three places, 1) A french style restaurant where we planned to have dinner, b) Sierra Coffee, a coffee joint owned by a New Zealander and c) the Uzbekistan Embassy just so we knew where it was for the appointment the next morning. We failed miserably to find any of the three. In fact we ended up walking around for 4kms in the wrong direction (thank you Google maps). But we did find a shopping mall and did a little window shopping. Caroline’s birthday was only 3 days away after all. Once back at our hotel we searched for the embassy, only to discover it was a mere 700 meters away. Oh well, we got to see quite a bit of leafy Bishkek.
We had a superb dinner at Obama Grill and Steakhouse.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Today was visa day. We headed to the Uzbekistan Embassy for our 10am appointment only to find many other people milling around all with the very same 10am appointment time. At roll-call we found out that we were 6th in line. We only had to wait 1 hour and 20 minutes before we were let in to be processed. The very good news, less than 5 minutes later we walked out with our Uzbekistan visas. This was the last visa we needed before getting to Belgium, so it was a good feeling to have this secured.
To celebrate, we headed to and, this time, found Sierra Coffee and had a mighty fine brew and lunch. We stayed there for quite some time, relaxing in the nice cool space.
Afterwards we paid a visit to the nearby modern shopping mall, where, the day before, a certain ‘birthday-girl-to-be’ had spotted some nice clothes that would do very well as a birthday present 🙂
In the evening we set out again, determined to find ‘U Frantzuza’ this time. First one of the online maps directed us to its sister winebar, and at least there we were pointed in the right direction. Turned out we were very close the day before but missed it by half a block. We sat down for dinner in the ‘garden’ but were generally disappointed with the quality of food and service.
That evening, upon getting back to our hostel, we met Martijn and Dieter, 2 (slightly crazy, good natured) Belgians on tour in Kyrgyzstan in a rental car. We swapped some stories, mostly about encounters with the blatantly corrupt police.
