Minsk, Belarus

We hadn’t done much (any) planning for Minsk so after a nice buffet breakfast we sketched out a bit of a plan, getting tickets for the opera, and then subway hopping to get pics of old Soviet buildings.

Minsk is a bit deceptive in that things look close but are quite far. First we walked over to the Opera and Ballet Theatre to get our tickets for the ballet for tomorrow. This looked close on the map and we could see roughly where it was from the lounge yesterday evening; but was actually a 20 minute walk.

We had tried to buy tickets over the web when we first booked the trip but had issues using our credit cards (I think the website only accepted Belarussian credit cards). Anyways the seat selection was less but we still got good seats for Anyuta (although not 5th row centre like we sat at the opera in Tashkent!). It was easy to pay in person, they even took Apple Pay.

Just down the street from our hotel, and before we got to the Opera, we passed by the KFC with a huge concrete Soviet facade. It’s one of the buildings I wanted to see here. I hadn’t googled exactly where it was, so it was lucky that it was so close.

Next we walked over to Victory Square. Took some pics, although with a cloudy background. Then we bought transit cards, with much pointing and gesturing as we didn’t speak Russian or Belarussian. At least we could somewhat read Cyrillic.

So we entered the subway. There were a couple of security people at the entrance but they pretty much ignored us once they heard us talking in English. We both had our day packs which they glanced at, but didn’t ask to look inside or anything.

The station wasn’t as photogenic as the Tashkent subway but I took some pics anyways. (The security folks didn’t mind this either).

We went five stops to Uschod. The subway was packed and I didn’t get a good look at the other stations. Uschod was pretty plain looking. Supposedly there are some great looking subway stations here, just not this one :)

We exited and walked over to the National Library of Republic of Belarus. Every blog or article I read on it mentions that the library's main architectural component has the shape of a rhombicuboctahedron, so consider yourself now duly informed.

I wanted to visit just to get a pic; while not of the Soviet era it’s still an unusual building. One of the blogs we read mentioned it had an observation deck, so we searched that out. The entrance is around the back side of the structure, not through the library. It cost 3.50 EUR for a ticket to the 22nd floor.

There’s a short walk up to the 23rd floor and the observation deck. The library is about 8km away from the centre of town, so there’s not much detail to be seen from the top, just a bunch of buildings in the distance.

There was a cafe on the 22nd floor so we had lunch there. It was really quite enjoyable, with cool music. We both had draniki, the national dish, which is sort of a hash brown with a topping. Heather had hers with smoked salmon, I tried it with caviar. Both were tasty.

We took the elevator back down, and then took a bunch more pics of the rhombicuboctahedron-shaped building. While we were lunching, the sky had cleared and the pics looked much better with a blue sky background.

Took the subway a couple stops back towards our hotel to Akademija, where the October theatre is. That’s another Soviet building I wanted to see. It happens to be directly opposite the Museum of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, which has a long name but also warrants a pic. It was into the sun so it didn’t work out though.

Because of the now nice weather (we took our umbrellas to start the day) we decided to walk down Prospekt Nezavisimosti the rest of the way home, about 5km. The architecture is great on this street, one of the main thoroughfares in Minsk. Along the walk we passed by Hospital No. 1 (the government buildings are all numbered here, ‘School No. 91’, or whatever), Belarusian National Technical University, Lido (where all the blogs suggest eating - we looked inside but it didn’t appeal to us), Museum of Contemporary Art, Gymnasium No.23 (I’m not making this up), Victory Monument (much better pics with the clear blue sky), Belarusian State Circus and the Labour Union Palace of Culture.

Then we turned down Lenin Street towards our hotel, passing through the very small old town.

Finally we got back to the hotel. I thought we had walked a lot but my phone said only 13.3km. Maybe cause it was in the sun it felt longer.

We had booked dinner at our hotel cause the forecast had called for rain at the time. Plus they specialize in steak, and between the ads in the elevators and the dry aging steaks in the breakfast area, I had a hankering for steak.

We thought it would be a low key affair but it turned out the restaurant is the place to be. The restaurant spills out onto the 7th floor terrace with a beautiful view of the sunset and the Svislach river which cuts through the middle of the city. There was a live jazz band which was awesome. The steak was done perfectly, which we had with a Chilean Malbec. It was a fun night.