Samarkand
Many years ago I took a cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg. We stopped at all of the little islands along the way and visited the pre-Czarist Russia villages and churches. At one point if I ever say another Greek Orthodox icon I could die and go to heaven. For all of the glory, it just gets to be too much. I thought Khiva and Burkara were wonderful but Samarkand abounds in larger than life monuments. I actually am feeling a bit saturated.
And then you get something completely new===the joy of travel. This man was an early astronomer–14th Century. He figured out that the sun was the center of the universe. He figures out that days were actually a bit short of 24 hours so we needed that extra leap year day. But, he was MURDERED!! in a revenge killing by a rival family. It was nearly 400years later that Galileo found the same thing and well, actually, didn’t work out that great for him.
BTW he was bringing home some strawberries when he saw a message in the wrapping to build his observatory on this spot. Hey, stranger things have happened.
