After ten hours on the train, I was ready for my holiday on the beach! Expectations, expectations, again, here I was, expecting a beach resort, palm trees and a warm Caspian Sea! When will I learn to google? When will I learn to go on trip advisor? ( I DO but only to write reviews on hotels!) it was raining! Booking my flight to Georgia took less than an hour! I met a gorgeous little girl called, Luciya! When I told her I had a friend called Lucia, we became instant friends! I have noticed I don’t like cold nor rain! No fun to walk around in! There is one museum here, which took less than half an hour! So now what? I had booked eleven nights, what possessed me to do so was beyond me for a few days! Until I realised, I had thought it to be a beach resort!

So to the beach I went! What a disappointment that one was! Industrial area on prime real estate! Really, what were they thinking? I was going to apply for a job as a town planner! It took me a few days until I realised there was a gorgeous walkway along the foreshore! It was just in the OTHER direction!

After a couple of days feeling sorry for myself, missing gorgeous Uzbekistan, I pulled my socks up! Enough! You WILL make the best of this! You WILL enjoy yourself! To my defence, I had booked my hotel because the Lonely Planet said people spoke English here! They lied!( well, the book is four years out of date!) so I came across the lovely staff of the Holiday Inn, where English was spoken! They booked me on a real pilgrimage!

Have told you that there are very few English speaking people here? This has become a bit of a problem as google translator does not make for good conversations! So I have a tendency to go back to the places where I can communicate, beyond asking for green tea or black coffee!
After the initial three days of being peeved at the lack of Aktau being a seaside resort, I did find that the foreshore on the other side of the city is just gorgeous. The beaches are nothing to write home about, mind you as we have the best beaches in the world in Oz, I don’t understand why I still have such high expectations of other countries!

There was an interesting museum, small and no English anywhere, so a quick visit. No art galleries! This I find strange as I saw art students painting in the street. Sun baking on the rocks doesn’t appeal to me, so what did I do? The pilgrimage took two days out of me ( read the next blob) .

On Saturday I did go to a necropolis outside Aktau, this is a cemetery, shame I was in too much pain to stay around too long. Yeah, I did it again! Have no idea what is going on! I was dancing like nobody was watching, and promptly put my back out! Belly button under my armpit, pain, agony and totally pissed off. Luckily a good chemist just around the corner of the hotel, lots of drugs, rest and sleep, and nearly back to normal. Does this mean I need to slow down?? Hmmm. Just wondering. I just bought a new bikini to do some sun baking, mind you the weather changed back to being cloudy and overcast! Sigh. Looking forward to flying to Georgia on Monday night. Good bye to Kazakhstan.