Krasnodar, day 2

Just slept 12 straight hours so now I can try to catch up a little bit on the blog. We got up Sunday and I had oatmeal and crepes for breakfast again at the hotel. We got ready and had to check out by 12, but the hotel let us leave our things there while we explored because our train didn’t leave until a little after midnight. Our first stop was the beautiful St. Katherine’s Cathedral behind our hotel. We couldn’t get into it so we just walked around it over to the part of the pedestrian zone that we didn’t see yesterday. (I told you. It’s a long pedestrian zone!) we start walking to the Alexander Nevsky cathedral and when we got to Katherine Square, we see a guy with a whole bunch of recumbent bikes, a draisine and a high-wheel bike. Let’s check this out. Turns out the guy’s name is Sergei Dashevsky. He set the Russian speed record on a bike in Reno, Nevada a while ago.the is an engineer by trade but gave it up years ago to concentrate on his hobby - bicycles. he also speaks excellent English. The had just got back from France where he did a 24 hour race. He did 840 km in 24 hours. Even if you don’t know how far a kilometer is, believe me, that’s a lot of riding. He’s ridden all over Europe and the States. (Google him and check out his videos.) of course, we talk with him for quite awhile. Fouad even rides the high-wheeler around the square. Meanwhile, there are 4 little ladies sitting on a bench, watching the whole thing. As Fouad is riding she says to me,”You understand that you have to pay him for this, right.” I told her that we were aware of that. She was trying to be so helpful and save us tourists. We talked a long time with Sergei and it turns out he has a bike museum in his heard. He invited us, but since he works the square on the weekends, we would only be able to visit him on Monday, and of course, we couldn’t. But I got his phone number and will keep in touch with him. He also told us about the bike museum in Kazan, which I didn’t even know existed. When we were finally ready to go, we put some money in the hat he had on the ground for that purpose. One of the little old ladies came back over and told us how there should be peace In The whole world. Older Russians still have horrible memories of World War II. One thing of seen here is a lot of stray dogs. While we were standing and talking with Sergei. A whole pack of stray dogs lay nearby. Whenever a bik3 or a motorcycle went by, two dogs would automatically get up and chase the vehicles. Yikes! I know that feeling. We walked down to Alexander Nevsky Cathedral and looked around, then walked back and stopped at the Coffee Cult cafe in the pedestrian zone. This building was very attractive inside and out. The architecture here is so much more European and definitely better maintained than in Kazan. We saw very few of the Soviet-type high rise settlements that are so typical in Kazan. I had tea and a great eclair at Coffee Cult. We spent awhile there then continued down through the pedestrian zone, looking a different monuments. Krasnodar is probably the most bike friendly city I’ve seen in Russia so far. There are bike parking racks and bike paths and signage all over the place. After all the walking, we headed to the Czech restaurant we had seen the day before for a late lunch. Sonia and Fouad tried the goulash soup, among other things and I had a gigantic hammock and cabbage. Lordy, that thing was big. We had to walk our meal off so we swore we would find the water tower we missed the day before if it killed us. And it turned out to be righ5 behind the Galleria shopping mall. It’s really an impressive structure. I’m glad we made the effort. Then we got on the bus and went to find the kissing bridge. That was relatively easy. We crossed it into the large park and had a nice walk until it started to get dark and we headed back to the Galleria. We decided to just hang out there since our train didn’t leave until a little after midnight. So we texted and communicated until we took a taxi to our hotel, picked up our luggage and headed for the train station in another taxi. To be continued!