We are still in the central area of Tashkent. This is all still very near our hotel.

There were lots of water features in central Tashkent. I don’t know their water situation but it certainly appeared that they have plenty of water. The first photo was a very nice water feature for a hot day. The water fluctuated up and down and around in varying patterns. The park areas meander through the buildings in central Tashkent.

Tashkent has three Metro lines. We saw several entry places into their metro system. It all looked very neat and clean and artistic. Of course, probably the most beautiful metro system I’ve ever seen was in Moscow, so there you go – the Russians. You can see a metro entrance in the second photo. We took a ride on their metro and it was quite nice.

The third photo is a large park area. The water feature in the first photo was at one end of this park area. If you look closely, you can see that streets run through this park. The next street up has cars parked on it. One of the cross streets was closed and there was an art show or fair going when we were there. I am just including one photo from the art fair which you can see in the fourth photo. This photo was one where there were quite a few paintings grouped together. Themes include horses, water, mosques, and even beautiful women. The crowd at the street art fair was very “artsy”.

The Monument of Courage Earthquake Memorial is seen in the last photo. It is dedicated to the men and women who rebuilt their flattened city following the 1966 earthquake. The quake was a magnitude 5.1 or so with an epicenter deep under the center of Tashkent so that the magnitude at the earth’s surface was like a 9.0 earthquake. The quake killed between 15 and 200 people and left 300,000 homeless. It took three and a half years to restore Tashkent. The monument shows an Uzbek man shielding a woman and child from the earth opening up before them. There is more to the monument but that’s the gist of it.