Best Eastern Baikalskye Terema Listvyanka

We our first day, Saturday, mooching about Irkutsk in the snow. It's a small city with some old timbre houses and the usual main street. Thankfully the price of things here is a lot cheaper than Moscow where we had to cook an evening meal both nights in the hostel and apart from that survive on MacDonald's!

So with a hot meal in our tummy's we set off on Sunday 18th to Lake Baikal and the lakeside town of ...

The directions seem straight forward as we get off the bus near the small port. We walk with lake that is as big as the sea on our left and small wooden houses on our right. There is a light covering of snow on the ground and huge mountains off in the distance.

We are due to meet Alexi, the accomodation recommended by the Irkutsk hostel, price agreed no idea what we are in for, the price is a tad more their our Irkutsdk hostel.

Mick has wondered off to the ...

Driving into Listvyanka was quite a sight. Coming around the mountainous corner, Lake Baikal opens up before you like a great black mass, all moody and intriguing. The snow has covered everything and its like a remote winter wonderland. There is only one road into Listvyanka and it finishes at the end of the town – less than 2kms in total. Small wooden houses dotted beside the lake accommodate the tourists and those that choose to live here. There is not a lot to do in Listvyanka ...

Will post journal later. For now, I wrote in an email to my parents:

Just yesterday I had an excursion to Lake Baikal and an olde tyme Siberian village nearby. It was incredibly picturesque and I took a whole bunch of photos as a result. I hope to do future trips to the lake where we get more out into the wilderness, as opposed to being mostly in towns along the lake, but ...

... on later Russian celebrations, even after everyone had forgotten what the symbols were supposed to mean. We talked about wood carvings that decorated houses, embroidery on ritual cloths, and folk songs. A few interesting things: (1) Traditionally, the bride sings a lament at her wedding ceremony. It's a very poetic and beautiful song in which she begs her father not to make her leave his family, and she talks about how sad she is to be bound ...

... St Petersburg (Leningrad, Petrograd) with a boat cruise of the waterways. No English spoken, so we learned nothing, to add to the nothing we already knew about St P. The views were great, the buildings are huge and regal and the season is autumn, so it all looks rather nice. St Petersburg was great to look around. We must have walked about 60km in the few days we were there. We did all the touristy stuff, like visiting the Hermitage, the ...

... people from the tour and hung out with them until we were supposed to get back on the bus. At the hotel we had a bit of free time before supper, and then we were off to the ballet. I was surprised to see that almost everyone had decided to go to the ballet - even the guys! The seats at the ballet were a little hard to find since we didn't understand any of the Cyrillic writing, but after being pointed in the right direction a couple times we opened ...

... us to a Rock 'n' roll saloon bar where were having a drink, as dinner was approaching we would go to the bar to order, but they were 'out' of everything like chicken which would be need for half the dishes. As we were left to our own devices we decided to split up, some stayed at the pub and some went to dinner, we went to dinner. We were with Cormac and Anna, Sarah and Maarty and Cynthia and Dionne (called De) to what Natasha pointed out an authentic Russian dinner. It was a ...

... out to greet me. Very nice of him. I was so happy to finally be at the hostel. It was small with two rooms with 4 bunk beds in each but the beds themselves were large and cozy looking. Wood bunks - not metal. There were two bathrooms with shower heads in them. I was finally going to be able to take a shower. Unfortunately, this is also when I learned the sad fact that during the summer they shut off the water in certain districts in St. Petersburg to make sure the pipes are good for ...