Start Driving in Nizhny Novgorod
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia is next in the list. Nizhny Novgorod, Russia’s fourth-largest city on the Volga River, captivates with its golden-domed kremlin fortress crowning a cliff where Oka waters merge, a 1221 stronghold reborn as trading empire hub since 1350 drawing Tatar khans, Italian merchants and Bolshevik plotters amid 1.2 million residents’ onion-domed skyline and chill -10°C January blizzards yielding to 25°C linden summers. Must-sees ascend the crimson-walled Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin housing gilded Archangel Cathedral tsars’ tombs, eternal flame eternalizing WWII dead, golden crosses of soaring minarets piercing clouds, plus underground Dmitrovskaya Tower dungeons revealing Soviet gulag echoes; stroll Chkalov Staircase’s 560 romantic steps plunging to Volga embankment promenades; roam vast Gorky State Art Museum’s 12,000 canvases from Repin icons to avant-garde Kandinsky; ride rattling monorail through post-industrial Arzamas outskirts; explore riverside beach clubs pulsing EDM under midnight sunsets. Culture erupts in annual Volga Boatman Festival’s burly oarsmen poling carved skiffs while choirs belt soulful bargee ballads, raucous Maslenitsa blini bonfires flipping pancakes atop ice forts before Lent, Orthodox Easter’s midnight processions swinging censers through floodlit monasteries, underground Sormovo steelworkers’ raucous accordion shanties fusing Cossack fire with gypsy brass, plus global Volga regatta crews swapping vodka toasts and pierogi tales. Cuisine tempts with sterlet zander caviar blini drizzled sour cream, shashlik marinated lamb skewers charred over open coals, pelmeni meat dumplings swimming in dill butter broth, pirozhki flaky pies bursting cabbage mushrooms, kvass rye tonic fizzing fermentation notes, and frothy Baltika drafts evoking trade-wind whispers and kremlin cannon salutes.