I visited Almaty this month and stayed there about 2 weeks. My impression starts with Air Astana. I liked the safety demo video and impressed by the travel kit from them, which at first view seems not really necessary. For sure, this company had its own pecularity. I liked city Almaty because:

A. City located in front of beautiful scenary of Mountain Alatau with snow on the top. Beside the view you can go there with cable car and do ice skating, ski and other winter sport is available.

B. People are very friendly and open if you can speak some Russian or Kazakh. I talked to many people including souvernir shop owner, bus driver, worker of city Akimat.

C. Taxi and Bus service is quite good developed and although numerous amount of cars, traffic jam seems only in big interchanges. I remember paying in Amsterdam for taxi between airport and city about 50 Euro which is almost robbery :) Here I paid 1500 Tenge, which is like 4 EUR for about same distance.

D. By the way, I tried new bycicle rent project and found it very easy and comfortable to use in the city. All bikes were fit and payment, usage, parking places were user friendly. Customer service which speaks english and made sure that I understand how it works.

E. Visited Kok Bazaar and found that vegetables and other food stuff had good quality and incredible price. Later I heard, that local people think that it is most expensive bazaar in the city.

F. During my stay there was heavy snow and in the night when it began I saw already city administration starting to clean the snow. It snowed almost whole night and day and it seemed to me Almaty was ready for this weather and already on the next day almost everywhere in the city center were clean.

G. Lastly, the people and culture, tradition, food seems like very close to me, I will for sure visit again.

I found it very kind from Air Astana staff who did check in, where would I like to sit in the plane. I almost forgot that this nice feature, in recent times.

Looking forward my next visit in Kazakhstan.