Bishkek

Hello,

We spent the day walking around Bishkek getting our bearing to an even greater extent. Bishkek is a very European city, and not at all what we expected. From reading and hearing from other travellers we thought the place would be very unfriendly and bleak, but we don't find it so. We find it quite green. The squares have some weeds, and almost no lights work at night, but by day it is quite pretty. Today it was 31'C and with the slight breeze we didn't find it hot at all, we've been in the desert too long. You can get anything you need here, the department stores carry everything that a department store in Canada would carry and more. The grocery stores likewise are well stocked, clean, just like a Safeway back home. We restrained ourselves to M&M's today, which tasted amazing. We walked through some of the parks admirring the alarmingly massive number of statues, and watched some pretty good 15 year old guys play doubles tennis. We then walked more than halfway across town to find the movie theatre. When we finally did, there was the latest movies playing however we were told they were in Russian without even English subtitles. We may watch Shrek 3 when it comes out but figured some others might be hard to understand without knowing what was going on. We went back to the amazing Italian place for dinner. Sara ordered the Spagetti with Tune (we thought it was a fancy name for something or other, it turned out to be Tuna. Sara not liking seafood was disappointed but scrapped off the tuna and ate the pasta. I ordered the Risotto, also not the best choice, while it tasted good, it was more like Spanish rice. Tomorrow the plan is to maybe go to a muesum, get organized to start going some day hikes, and stop walking so much and read our books for a bit.

Pictures would describe Bishkek much better, however the computers we are on tonight won't let me load them, so you'll have to wait... sorry.

Sara and Tyson