Travel with Kevin and Ruth: Not often we splurge on a meal out

There is a big indoor market here in Almaty that is supposed to be quite something. So we walked over there yesterday morning to check it out, and were disappointed to find it was closed. Not sure whether this was a one time thing, or perhaps it's closed every Monday which is entirely possible. Maybe we'll try again on Thursday before we leave.

However, there were some food stalls open, so we decided to take advantage of that. One place was serving the popular local dish plov, and it looked really good.

So we went in and ordered a plate to share.

Yummy plov!

With two cups of tea and some bread for 1,700 tenge ($3.70 USD, $5 CAD).

So we're out wandering around, and Ruth spots this coffee shop and the two people by the window are sipping out of this massive coffee mug... and it was full!

Drink that and you'll be running to pee!

An interesting building, but it was tough to get a decent photo of.

We walked by the cathedral once more.

From the clear blue sky in that photo, you would never think the smog is so bad.

The Memorial of Glory.

Dedicated to 28 soldiers of an Almaty infantry unit who died defending Moscow from the Germans.

The eternal flame.

Musical instrument museum.

Mid afternoon, we met up with friends Ron and Danielle again... this time at an Irish pub for a cold beer. They flew back to Astana last night. I wonder where in the world we will bump into them again!

Kevin, Ruth, Danielle, and Ron.

And, yesterday was Ruth's birthday! So, we headed out in the evening and walked back to the Kazakhstan Hotel where we had a 7:00pm reservation at the top floor Barfly Restaurant. It's not often we splurge on a meal out, but this place had such a nice ambiance... and as I've said before, if you're going to splurge at an expensive restaurant, best to do it in an inexpensive country!

We are headed to the top floor for dinner.

Interesting story.

The building was designed to withstand a 9.0 earthquake.

I took a photo of the main course menu for you.

Click to make it full screen, click again to zoom in.

Ruth had a glass of white wine, and I had a large beer.

I had the blackened salmon.

And Ruth had the sea bass.

While we were perusing the menu, we noticed a note in tiny letters that if it was your birthday you got a free piece of birthday cake as well as 15% off your meal! So we mentioned that to the waiter, and the manager came over and took a photo of Ruth's passport and wished her happy birthday.