While in Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan I was starting to see a pattern in how Russian cities were organized. A pedestrian commercial street terminated at the river end with a Kremlin perched on high ground above a river confluence. Compared to Tver, Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan were not as far down on the city scale scale to St. Petersburg and Moscow. Nizhny Novgorod looked a little rundown around the edges while Kazan is simply a nice city. The crowds gave it a metropolitan type feel.
I arrived in Nizhny Novgorod around 10am and caught a sleeper train later that night to Kazan. Every Russian train station I went to, including the small station in Vyborg, had a luggage room. Most of the luggage rooms were self service with two major issues for an American traveler: the locker operating instructions are not in English and, a bigger issue, you need wireless credit card to pay for the locker. No change or cash is accepted. Not wanting to carry my backpack all over town, I made a reservation at a hostel. For $8 this was a great move. It was also the nicest hostel I visited. The other benefit of booking the hostel is I was able to shower before boarding the train.
I arrived in Nizhny Novgorod around 10am and caught a sleeper train later that night to Kazan. Every Russian train station I went to, including the small station in Vyborg, had a luggage room. Most of the luggage rooms were self service with two major issues for an American traveler: the locker operating instructions are not in English and, a bigger issue, you need wireless credit card to pay for the locker. No change or cash is accepted. Not wanting to carry my backpack all over town, I made a reservation at a hostel. For $8 this was a great move. It was also the nicest hostel I visited. The other benefit of booking the hostel is I was able to shower before boarding the train.
Nizhny Novgorod's pedestrian street extends for over a half mile. There's some restaurants and a few shops along the promenade.
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A nice touch to the promenade were the statues.
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At the end of the promenade is another brick Kremlin with a church and a few administrative buildings inside.
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The Kremlin had a large government building and a small church. Otherwise like the other Kremlin's I saw it was more imposing on the outside than the inside.
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From the Kremlin it's a significantly steep drop down to the river below. The entire time I was walking down I was preemptively dreading the return walk up. The reason for the walk was is that there was another shopping area along the river I wanted to check out that had a few more restaurants, one of which that specializes in Georgian cuisine, so I'd be able to have another taste of Kachupurri.
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This time the Kachupurri came with a mint soda which takes as good as it looked funky.
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The walk up from the river to the promenade is made easier because of Chakov's Stairs, a set of 300 steps that ride along the embankment. It was not a fun climb.
There were some good views from the top looking back down on the Volga River and the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin Wall.
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I spent the rest of the day hanging around Nizhny Novgorod's pedestrian street. These streets are always great for people watching although I've never been able to figure out where people are walking to or from - they just seem to be walking the promenade from end to end without any final destination in mind.
I finally, finally found a store selling shirts with Cyrillic handwriting. I would not have imagined a shirt with a phrase in the local language would be so difficult to find but I finally lucked out in a local sports store.
For dinner I went to a hot dog / sandwich shop off the promenade. The promenades seem to be a vortex that pulls away all surrounding commercial life. Oh My Dog was a street over and a quiet world away.
That night I took a sleeper train to Kazan, which for better or worse, was uneventful. The chicken and rice dinner served on the train wasn't much, however, the comfortable sleep made up for any meal shortcomings. I shared the berth with one other person, a Russian, and we were both asleep within an hour of departure. The problem with sleeping on the way to Kazan is that Kazan is in the same time zone as St. Petersburg, even though it's seven hour high speed train and six hour slow train away, which means the sun starts rising by 3am and is fully shining less than thirty minutes later.
I finally, finally found a store selling shirts with Cyrillic handwriting. I would not have imagined a shirt with a phrase in the local language would be so difficult to find but I finally lucked out in a local sports store.
For dinner I went to a hot dog / sandwich shop off the promenade. The promenades seem to be a vortex that pulls away all surrounding commercial life. Oh My Dog was a street over and a quiet world away.
That night I took a sleeper train to Kazan, which for better or worse, was uneventful. The chicken and rice dinner served on the train wasn't much, however, the comfortable sleep made up for any meal shortcomings. I shared the berth with one other person, a Russian, and we were both asleep within an hour of departure. The problem with sleeping on the way to Kazan is that Kazan is in the same time zone as St. Petersburg, even though it's seven hour high speed train and six hour slow train away, which means the sun starts rising by 3am and is fully shining less than thirty minutes later.
