Day 15 was the day where I walked 15 miles as I explored most of the city in the search for rollercoasters which were scattered all around the city. The 2 main parks (Family Park and Fantasy World) were known about ages ago but we'd managed to confirm 2 others in indoor malls, one each for Thomas and myself. One day Google will provide the ability to see inside buildings, until then we have to explore a little further than just Google Earth such as social media like Facebook and Youtube.
Friends who have holidayed with me know that I like my city walking and even when there is public transport I prefer to just get about on foot even if that means it takes longer to do things. However as I've gotten older I am a little more partial to using it, more so when it's hot, which it was for my entire stay in Almaty despite there being shade. So, for today I would use some metro, I say some, I ended up using all of it as the city only has a single line currently with a small number of stops along it.
Happylon, the Russian chain that I'd seen in Astana had one park in Almaty and that's where I went first. This was the northern most park in a very new mall full of western chains. There was a young lad on security detail here who was being super strict with guests on bikes and the like. He kept eyeing me as I took a break outside, I think he wanted to get do a security check of my bag or something. Being a Happylon park I had to buy a card and charge it up to ride their silly little rollercoaster.
From there I travelled to Fantasy World which is probably the best park in the city. However today I'd gotten to it too early and the park had yet to open. Rather than come back to it I chose to bounce it to the next day and took the metro as close as I could get to Family Park, the second best park in the city. Yes, the metro doesn't go this far out however development taking place outside of the park was encouraging as they appear to be extending the metro adding a new station right outside the park. Rather amusingly they had a collection of old military vehicles and cannons in one section of the park which had become impromptu climbing frames. The rides in this park were ok actually with a compact yellow coaster that went over the roof of a building and a larger galaxi coaster that made a nice change from all the small rollercoasters I'd endured over the last few days.
The furthest park out, Fantastic Park was one found by Thomas and was a 4 mile round trip. With no Metro (there is another new station being built which would help) and no obvious bus between the two locations it was an opportunity to walk on the edge of the city centre and explore more supermarkets as I looked for water and juices to keep me cool along the way. The amusement centre was small but did have a little aeroplane themed coaster, and they were ok with me riding, so not a waste of time.
I don't know if it was the excess red bulls or something else but on the walk back to the hotel I had an amazing sense of well-being and for a short while felt really really good. In hindsight it must have been the red bull.
The hotel uses a rainbow umbrella as a safety sign. Odd.
The hotel I was in was features on one of the country's banknotes such is its importance. Nice! I don't think I've ever stayed in a banknoted property before. A bit of an unusual first I guess.
I managed to catch some more murals on my walk, the first one was visible from the hotel room and was instantly recognisable as being by Fanakapan; his work is prevalent in East London and I'm very aware of his stuff. He was one of the few artists invited for the art festival.
The architecture in the city is a great mix of old Communist, modern malls and huge traditional Kazakh style buildings such as the theatre at the bottom.
Fantasy World was closed. More on this place tomorrow.
Next to the park is the city circus. The fountains made this fantastic whooshing sound as they fired and I liked the statues within it.
Whilst not a deep or ornate enough to beat Moscow's, some of the stations are still way grander than what we have here in London.
The Kazakh's are known for their falconry, or whatever it's called when you're working with birds bigger than a falcon. Whilst a bit of a ridiculous advert, it does make sense. I was hoping to get a photo of me holding one of these but I think I had to be way out of the city to find where this takes place.
Close to a market I found another mural, which was really cool. The bags of fruit being sold in the market reminded me of living in Cyprus but the way the meat was laid out on tables had me thinking they must be pretty tolerant of badly maintained meat.
I've no idea what the lower sign represents.
Coaster number 1 was located in the Mega Mall, a pretty new looking mall. The rollercoaster is only a few months old but is another of the spinning coasters that are appearing everywhere. But a tick is a tick and I did get to tick this one off.
Opposite the rides was another smaller entertainment place called Evrikum, offering a VR experience in a rather rudimentary set up. I gave it a go but it didn't really work very well.
The military display being climbed over marked the southern entrance to Family Park.
A fairly ok selection of rides inside the park.
This caught my eye as I'm not sure Uber will work in Kazakhstan. To fill a gap in public transport the locals will often offer a car pool service and you'll see people at the side of roads hailing any car that might pick them up. Drivers aren't licensed and can just choose to help if they're driving the same way. A fee is negotiated between the passenger and driver. That's basically uber without the company wrapped around the process.
The walk to the sputnik mall was good if not particularly exciting. It was a hot day though.
and the final rollercoaster of the day was the aeroplane one.
On the way back there was a brand new mall celebrating it's opening, it's opposite the Moskva station. So new only half of it was open and whilst I was able to grab something to eat I didn't see any sign of any amusement park despite it's size.
No comments:
Post a Comment