A shorter ride to bring us to the city of Казань and a rest day. We left our riverside campsite and were back on the larger roads today heading to the city. However, rather than taking the large bridge (M7), the plan was to take a small ferry across the water from Верх. Услон I had been asking for a few days if this ferry existed and with exception of once this morning, the answer was affirmative.

It was getting warm again today, but we had slight tailwinds as we climbed over several hills and then to the turnoff at 40km. The last kilometers brought us closer to the Volga River again and then down to the ferry. Turned out it was a passenger ferry and left in two hours (1pm). So we found a store for lunch items, went to the post office and then on the ferry. I spoke with a man who introduced his profession as “officer” on the ride over. We had a Lonely Planet Guide that told us the likely hotels and picked out our candidate (Hotel Fatima). It took a bit to get through the city, and on the way we came across three other hotels. Each of them told us they were full. Finally we got to the designated hotel. They had room! We found and picked out a room, and then let them know about the bicycles. They were initially reluctant to allow bikes to the room but finally gave up on us foreigners. It was nice to get to a shower with warm water and otherwise change after some days on the road. Plan is to use tomorrow as a rest day and then be on the road again. However, more likely to try the roads towards Perm since we’re still a bit gun shy about the M7.

As you can see, I’ve been able to upload some photos to the web site - though I wasn’t able to copy the larger originals and make thumbnails. Each internet location has its own different things that seem to work or not work. For example, gmail worked last night at this computer but seems to be having difficulties this morning (so if you didn’t see a mail, I wasn’t able to send it).

55km today, 4179km across Eurasia [Photo: 652, 656]

Posted by mev as Volga at 6:44 PM EDT

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We reached the city of Kazan today and plan to stay here for a day. We’ve had some interesting bicycling through some quiet though sometimes rough roads. We tried cycling the main motorway “M7″ between part of Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan. The road was poor and it was a never ending stream of trucks coming from behind. The road was narrow as well. Hence, we chose some of the smaller roads south of the M7. The road conditions were sometimes just as poor, but everything else was better: nice little villages, almost no trucks and some fun cycling the back roads. Today we took the ferry across to middle of Kazan and found a nice little hotel in middle of town. The shower even has hot water! What more could a cyclist want. I’ll try uploading some other journal days tomorrow during the rest day when we also run some errands and play tourist in this city.

We’re likely to try going northeast from here towards Perm, rather than get back on that M7 motorway. Will see how it all comes out. Otherwise, having fun and feeling a bit challenged by riding here.

Posted by mev as Volga at 6:08 PM EDT

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