Friday, 16 October 2026

 

Start: Hotel Astrakhan (RU) 11:00

Arrival: Hotel Astrakhan (RU) 15:00

 

Total: 5 km on foot

 

 

I had a quarter glass of bubbly for breakfast. Yep, I know how it sounds, but it was just so cool that they would offer champagne for breakfast. The actual food was really good too. We spent almost an hour eating, drinking coffee and looking out on the mighty river. Even the small sidearm visible from here was much wider than any other river I had seen thus far. Which only tells you that I've never been to Egypt or Northern Brazil. Blue-eyed enthusiasm can be so revealing.

 

 

Around 11 am, I called a Yandex cab which brought us to the walls of the kreml in no time. The cab driver was chatty and nice, so I gave him a generous tip and rounded the fare up to 200 rubles. Slightly more than two euros. Won't break the bank.

 

 

"Kreml" is really just the Russian word for fortress. Like any fortress, there's a main gate where you can get in. We ran around half the fortification before we found the gap in the wall. Inside, a beautiful park awaited us.

 

 

There was a small chapel with dark old frescoes, a large church decked out in gold imagery with Bible scenes in light watercolours all over the walls and ceiling.

 

 

There were also several museums within the fortress walls. They seemed be about the town history and its famous sons and daughters. "Seem" because they would not take our 5000-ruble bills and we could not pay by credit card, courtesy of the sanctions enforced by the Western states. As we did not have the correct amount in cash (some 600 rubles each), we could not get in. Sonia preferred to stroll around outside anyway, so that's what we did.

 

 

It was pretty windy. A stiff breeze, a seaman might say. We explored some more of the town. A small shopping centre, parks. Our cabbie this morning had been right: Astrakhan was not a big city, one might even call it a tiny bit sleepy. "No touters, no dust clouds, no open canals, no shashlik stench", Sonia summed it up. In short: a wonderful town. What a boon.

 

Later, coffee break at a cute little café. They had "kholodny kofe bambl apelsin" on offer. Cold coffee bambl-whatever orange? What might this be? I ordered it to find out. Again, the girl behind the counter refused our "large" bank note, so we paid with our last small change.

 

It turned out to be a large coffee floating on lots of orange juice. Colourwise, this looked like a bumblebee, hence the name Bambl. Obvious, once you know it.

 

"There's a bank at the corner", Sonia said, "I'm going to try and split our bills into smaller change." Off she went, leaving me to sip my bambl. My sister, a busy bee too.

 

 

An hour later, she was back, fuming. "There's one woman holding up the entire line", she complained. "She's been inside the kassa for the entire 60 minutes, what can possibly take that long?" A mystery indeed. We returned to the bank together. The situation had not changed. We decided that we didn't need small change that badly and strolled on towards the embankment.

 

 

The promenade was not too busy in the early afternoon. Apart from a pirate bar blaring out loud music, everything was pleasantly quiet and relax. We watched the Volga, moving purposefully towards the Caspian Sea. A large forested island split the river in two, creating a green lung for the city. I relished the clean fresh air.

 

 

We even found a couple of lotus leaves in a small bend in the river. The smell was not so great here, though. A distinct whiff of rotting plant matter. A sign told us that bathing was strictly forbidden. Amazing that they would have to point that out. Several optimistic fishermen had swung their lines out into the waters, hoping to catch a fish or maybe just whiling away the time. An idyllic spot, really.

 

 

There was a statue of a lady and her dog. "Ah, the famous Chekhov short story", Sonia nodded knowingly. I'd never heard of that story, so maybe not that famous after all. "What's it about?" I asked. "No idea", Sonia replied, "a woman, I guess. And her dog." We would have to read that fascinating tale one day. Maybe then we'll find out that it's really a play by Dostoevsky and that the plot revolves around a man and his cat. I could see myself writing a story like that.

 

The wind had picked up speed. In the distance behind the harbour cranes, we saw the blue windows of our Marins hotel. Maybe two kilometres away. "Wanna walk?" The alternative was hailing a YandexGo and make the poor bloke deal with the fact that he had to give us 4,800 ruble of change for a 200-ruble ride. We're not mean, we both preferred to walk instead.

 

We trudged on, fighting against the headwind. The storm had fun picking up the tiny gravel along the sidewalk and flinging it up into our faces. Nice free workout slash face peeling for half an hour.

 

We reached the hotel, hair all dishelleved and cheeks flushed. I headed up to our room to finish my blog. "Will be right up too", Sonia said mysteriously. Ten minutes later, she appeared and proudly announced that she had organized us some useable cash. A waiter at the hotel restaurant had been kind enough to feed two of her 5000-ruble bills into his own bank account at the ATM, then to retrieve the same amount in smaller bills. Nice guy! Cash problem solved. That just left the scrambled GPS sign to worry about and the question of locating a functioning gas station without working internet connection, in order to fill up before heading out into the vast Kalmykian steppe. Not to mention the likely police checks in the various Caucasus republics that we would be driving through tomorrow. Cheers to that.