Tag kazan

Calm Beauty in Kazan

Angel Ackerman 3 Comments

Kazan has proven gorgeous, calm, and the perfect blend of urban and small town. The mix of religious cultures is not “in your face,” but the orthodox Christian church and the mosque are side by side. I have seen women with beautiful headscarves covering their heads with color and style. (In general, the women are impeccably dressed and very sweet looking.)

English is rare to find, but we have been handed a few English menus. The mosque was lovely, and a good learning experience for my daughter.

I also smoked some hookah for the first time.

Waterfront
Photobomber in Kazan
Mother and daughter covered
From 1000-1300
From 1000-1300
A dowry
Inside the mosque
Reading Qu’ran verses
Mosque
The mosque
Kremlin in Kazan
Kremlin in Kazan
Russian BLT
My first hookah

We visited the museum of Islamic history and the mosque. It may have been the first time my daughter saw items about 1,000 years old other than a dusty old mummy. I found a lot of the material interesting, various religious texts, holy books in Arabic and Armenian, photos from the 1917 Muslim Women’s Conference, and a chest with a dowry.

When we stopped for a hookah and coffee, and I got my daughter a ham sandwich and myself something with bacon, pineapple and blue cheese. It ended up being a Russian BLT. A delightful and flavorful thing.

Thank Heaven for Russian Grandmothers

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

This morning we slept until almost nine which is odd for all of us. We had breakfast in the main restaurant of Peter I. I wanted to get a pedicure (2,000 rubles) but there wasn’t enough time. We walked the child around town until it was time to head out to the subway.

And we not only found the subway but navigated it back to the train station.

We bought our tickets and headed back to the airport where I pointed randomly to some exotic juice for the child and what appeared as a latte with sesame seeds on it. It turned out to be a PEANUT BUTTER LATTE. Why they put sesame seeds on it, I don’t know. BUT DID YOU HEAR THAT, HUSBAND??? Peanut butter latte! PEANUT BUTTER LATTE. I had tried again to give the child 500 rubles spending money and this time she bought the cutest little baby nesting doll key chain for 280 rubles.

And I drank a delicious peanut butter latte.

Did I mention the peanut butter latte?

We flew to Kazan via Aeroflot. The only “event” of our flight was the fact that we all refused to eat the salmon and pickle sandwich on pumperknickel. Okay, so child ate some of it.

We  managed to find the airport express train into Kazan, a bargain at only 120 rubles for the three of us. (The Moscow airport train costs 470 rubles for one of us.) The girl at the ticket counter assured us it was only a five to ten minute walk from the station to our hotel, Courtyard Marriott at the Kremlin.

Except we had no clue how to get out of the train station, let alone find our hotel.

Luckily, a Russian grandmotherly type who spoke no English looked at our map, escorted us out and found us a taxi.

Kazan has some amazing architecture but I’ll get into that in the morning. We decided to go to a kebab place for dinner, writing down the Russian street names. We couldn’t find it. Ended up at a decent place with various foods… but here’s the great part, our waitress spoke English!

The city at night is amazing with its colors and domes against the night sky. More about that tomorrow.