Hmm bit of rough night last night everyone was a bit tired and cranky, Aimee thought she had lost her Swiss Army Knife from Switzerland.....and Bec was tired cranky and craving. I kept to myself and we went to bed, woke up much happier after a good long nap and many thanks to Norma for her words of motherly wisdom :)
Today we explored city park and visited the memorial hill dedicated to the victims of the soviet repression era. City park is beautiful just like the rest of Astana it had been thought out so well and planned to impress.
Astana seems to have been built on the celebration of freedom and the opportunity to design and choose how they wanted their new capital to be presented. It's the most beautiful city I have ever seen, every single detail has been thought of right down to the floral design of EVERY single garden in the city.
City park also had a huge map of Kazakhstan in miniature, literally every main tourist attraction or important icon in Kazakhstan has been covered there's so much to look at that it does take a while to get around it, a little bit run down though it would be spectacular if it was restored. The Astana city section was particularly good much newer and under cover do less sun damage. It gave us a pretty good indication of where we had walked the day prior and how much further we had to walk....a bit daunting to look at if it was at all to scale. Which we later found out it was :/
We did a big loop around the opposite end of the city closer to where we were staying we continued past city park over a huge footbridge, not sure of the name but it was a very modern design. At the other side there was a good find, an old english pub called The Guns and Roses. We decided to have lunch there I had lamb chops, Bec had a burger and Aimee had a chicken schnitzel which was not a schnitzel rather a chicken breast with giant croutons on it all dishes came with a giant puff of something bread with a stalk of rosemary in it.
We went on after lunch to visit the largest souvenir shop in Astana 'Tumar and Talisman' quite large with a lot of desirable and not so desirable souvenirs such as Lynx furs and Grizzly Bear heads,cool to know what a bear felt like though I don't agree with shooting them, stuffing them and selling them. Others may feel different but that's just me. We eventually decided to splurge on three identical eagle pendants, as these represented the beauty of Kazakhstan and our memories of driving through the steppe and seeing golden eagles soaring high above us. However they were a bit on the expensive side as usual we justified all the reasons for buying them and paid our 43200 Tenge total. No guilt there still well under budget :)
After emptying our pockets we explored the nearby parks and saw some old men playing chess with one of those giant chess sets, and some kids riding battery powered 4wd toy cars around a fountain chasing pigeons.
We made our way back to the guest house and took some time out before we went to see the lights of Astana at night.
At around 8pm (still broad daylight) we made the trek back to Astana city to see Bayterek at night and singing fountains. Every night at 9pm the fountain behind Bayterek is lit up with classical music in the background and a beautiful fountain display. It was so much fun to watch and there were so many people around enjoying the night air, maybe not so much the blood thirsty mosquitoes!!!!!! They were out in force!!!!
We strolled down past Bayterek which was spectacular at night changing colours every minute or so absolutely gorgeous. The atmosphere in Astana after dark is peaceful and romantic, we walk all the way to the presidents palace which was stunning, the area around the main strip is spacious and again well though out. After we reached as far as we could go we made our way back to the guest house to pack....again :(
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