Day 7 (Belarus) – 24 Hours in Minsk
We arrived at our Minsk hotel, Hampton by Hilton yesterday evening where luxurious rooms (compared to the Ibis) awaited us! The rooms are much more spacious along with all the usual accessibility features i.e. shower seats. However, the pinnacle of this is that ones room overlooks the main train station meaning that trains are arriving/departing as I type!
As today was our only day in the city, one headed out to search for the centre passing Soviet built structures along the way…
The centre itself isn’t overly big in size meaning that you can see the majority of landmarks in a matter of hours such as Victory Square…
When walking around the city, one noted that the majority of shops and restaurants have steps at some stage i.e. indoors even when a ramp is outside. Another thing to note is that the main avenues adopt a similar underpass system as China complete with steps meaning that you may end up walking quite a while to reach an over ground crossing point!
The plan after lunch was to simply have a wander back along Prospekt Nezavisimosti (the main street/avenue in Minsk) back to the hotel via an observation tower when we were pleasantly diverted. Whilst attempting to figure which tower was the correct one, we were approached by a guy in a wheelchair plus a ‘social worker’ (who had apparently seen us wandering around earlier) asking the PAs if they were volunteers for a Belarusian charity who provides summer camps for the disabled. After chatting for a while, they invited us to hop onto the metro with them (at an inaccessible station but it was clear that they were pros at the steps business!) out of the centre to a ‘hipster’ neighbourhood complete with street art and quirky cafés/restaurants. It is probable that we would never have found it without them…
Regarding the accessibility of the Minsk metro, once you are down on to platform level, the gap between the edge and the train is minimal (Superbunny would have definitely cleared it). At the destination station, there was a series of ‘platform lifts’ to street level.
Tomorrow, one heads back out to Minsk International Airport to catch our flight back to the UK concluding this trip! Ones next adventure involves visiting Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.