Kazan

Last year when I was approved for my Russian visa, it allowed me to visit the country for up to 90 days through early 2018.  I decided that I would make another visit back to Russia in 2017 since I enjoyed my visit last year.  But on this trip I wanted to see a few other Russian cities in addition to Moscow.

Kazan is in central Russia and considered by many people to be Russia's third most important city.  It also has a large Asian population due to it's geography.

My flight from Chisinau was at 11:30, so my travel to Kazan would take up the whole day since my 2nd flight was delayed by 3 hours.  The Chisinau airport was fairly small with only 8 gates and the Aeroflot flight to Moscow left on time.

One nice thing about speaking English is that even on flights with few (if any) English speakers on the plane, they make announcements in English in addition to the airline's native language.  Also the flight attendants usually speak English pretty well.  The 3 hour flight to Moscow was fairly smooth except for some passengers trying to get their luggage out the overhead bins before the plane reached the gate.

I cleared immigration fairly quickly and then had 4 hours to kill waiting for my next flight.  Fortunately there was free wifi at the Moscow airport to help pass the time.  My flight from Moscow to Kazan was only 1.5 hours and I arrived just there just before 9:00 pm.  I was lucky that the free wifi worked in arrivals area so I could get a cheap Uber ride to the hotel.  The driver was really friendly & tried to point out some of the sights as we drove through town.

I had booked a room (at no charge using points) at the Doubletree Hilton for two nights, which is right in the center of town. The hotel room was extremely nice and the staff was excellent, they even gave me a very late checkout at no charge since I am a Hilton Honors member.

The hotel is just a block from the main walking street and close to the main tourist sites. The most interesting place that I visited was the Kazan Kremlin.  Kremlin in Russian means fortress.  In addition to the fortress itself there is a Russian Orthodox Church and large Islamic Mosque. 

After spending time at the Kremlin, I went to the Soviet lifestyle museum which had a lot of cool pop culture stuff along with some propaganda books and posters.  The owner seems to be a big fan of AC/DC since there was numerous merchandise from the band.  They also had Russian military coats and hats which you could put on & get your photo taken with.

Stalin and AC/DC together at last.

It was really cold in the evenings there when the wind was blowing hard and I was not enjoying this weather especially when I took these photos in the evening.

Kazan was a fun place to visit for a few days and I was glad that I took the time to go there.  I was lucky to find a cheap 1 hour flight ($33) from Kazan to my next stop in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.  Even though the cities are 200 miles apart, the overnight train takes 10 hours & the bus takes 5-6 hours.  So flying was definitely the best option to get there.