I had a great start to the weekend. Yesterday when I got home from work, I figured I had finally better make plans for the winter break or I wouldn’t get anything. My break is from 27 Dec to 10 Jan. I was toying with bike trips in Spain or Greece, or just a trip to room. I googled Spain tours and Greece tours and they are all in spring. But Spain offered some bus tours of Andalusia, which is the particular area I am interested in. I didn’t know which one to choose, so I whatsapped my Spanish friend Sonia quickly to see if she was free and ran over to her apartment, which is in the building about 500 feet from mine. We found a great 9-day tour which gives me time for an extra day in Segovia and Madrid. We found a reasonable flight AND a good deal on a hotel near the airport. And Sonia lives right around the corner, so she is going to pick me up when I get into Madrid. The flights will be long because of time waiting for connecting flights, but I will finally get to see this historic and culturally important part of Spain that has always interested me. Glad I got that taken care of.
Today was also very, very pleasant. After cleaning up a little and Skyping to Germany, I met Anna downtown. We walked to the Hermitage Museum and looked at an exhibit of Imperial pottery, made in St. Petersburg. It was a lovely exhibit with a combination of old and modern. Then we walked all the way across town to the bookstore with the collection of English-language books. Two surprises: it was smaller than I had expected and it had a wonderful collection of English-language materials for young kids. Both Anna and I fond books we thought we might enjoy. The store owner happened to come in while we were there , heard us speaking English, thanked us for patronizing her store and offered us a cup of tea. We sat right down at the table in the store and drank tea and ate chocolate. We even started browsing through our books. I’ll guarantee we’ll be going back there.
We left the store and walked through the passage connecting the mall to the hotel and took the elevator up to the 25th-floor restaurant. It was already totally dark in Kazan and the view of the city all lit up was breath-taking. It was a very noble establishment but everyone was casually dressed. It seems pretty obvious that a lot of well-off foreigners use this hotel when they come to Kazan. The wait staff all spoke English.
We shared a bruschetta appetizer, each of the four pieces of bread having a different topping. We shared two pots of tea. I had the black spaghetti with shrimp and Béchamel sauce and Anna had a salad with roast beef slices.it was finally a meal that wasn’t too bland. In fact, it was excellent. My whole bill with tax and tip was $15. The view alone was worth that.
I caught a bus home and am in for the night. My stomach is still full!
Tomorrow is clean-up and shopping day. The landlady come Monday to read the meters. The place had better look good. And I get to skype to Germany tomorrow night. That will be fun.
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