Almaty. Day 31

 Good evening from Almaty International Airport (ALA).

We've quite liked Almaty. To be honest, that might be partly because it's quite modern and this makes it much more like the cities we're used to. Though the traffic and car horns could be improved.  This is despite it still having an authoritarian regime - the lack of freedom etc is not apparent at a tourist level.

It has been a pretty quiet day with little to report, so you might want to skip over today. We (Lynn) spent the morning organising and re-packing for the flights home. Eventually we checked out and wandered about the town for as long as we could. Lynn had looked forward to visiting the Marks & Spencer but was very disappointed with the contents, so we walked up the pedestrian mall and around the town generally.

  

When we ran out of things to do we read in the hotel until we were picked up and taken to the airport where, as already explained, I am writing this.

Our flight out on Air Astana, KC 909, is at 12.05am. Apparently, Kazakhstan's position in the world means that a large number of its international flights are in the middle of the night and that's when it is busiest. The traffic meant it took a long time to get here but the airport is not particularly big and it's medium-busy, so now we have a couple of hours to kill before out flight to Seoul. Lynn's plan is to eat in the airport and sleep as much of the flight as possible. This is a good plan, but no plan survives first contact with the enemy.


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