Our day in Almaty

Our flight arrived in Almaty at 1am, and no one was there to greet us… a heart stopping moment! Sasha, our driver, arrived after about 5 minutes (whew!). He took us straight to our apartment, we popped our Ambien and had a good sleep.

In the morning, we did paperwork at the adoption agency’s office downtown, then our driver Sasha turned us loose for the afternoon on our own, before our flight to Karaganda. It was a rainy afternoon and we went for a long walk. It was an adventure to order coffee at a café and sound out the street names to find our way around, but it was fun. (Our time spent learning the Russian alphabet really paid off!)

Almaty is an interesting, big city full of pretty tree-lined streets and lots of tulips in bloom. (We’ve read that tulips are actually from Kazakhstan!) We found it quite charming with a bit of a European feel to it.

We asked Sasha to pick us up early for our evening flight, and he took us to a ‘famous’ church that is in all the tour books. Quite impressive, and set in a pretty little park. Here are a few pix.












It was a humbling experience at times, not being able to read or speak the language - or even make a phone call! - but we took it in stride and really enjoyed the day.