Best Eastern Maly Khabarovsk

... Everything in Russia is temporary, you push against a wall and it suddenly comes down. Visiting a brand new hotel, that showcased the most beautiful rooms, and finding plastic hangers in the closet. Entering a beautiful cosmetic store and finding out that you cannot take pictures. Yet, the people who live here are so hospitable it puts us all to shame.

The city of Khabarovsk is one of the most pleasant on the eastern coast. All though you can still ...

... lik Norsk natur. Jeg vil gå så langt som å si at foruten et lite område nær Mongolia-grensen med et gigantisk snøfritt slettelandskap, så vil du se mer fin natur med Oslo-Bergen banen på vinterstid. Folk fra andre nasjoner vil nok være mer begeistret. Skulle jeg gjort det om igjen, noe jeg gjerne kunne gjort skulle det blitt på sommeren og på linjen som går gjennom Mongolia. Bilder fra togturen og videre inn til Kina: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2 30513&id=692875787&l=4edad85a81

... a very cold wind. Got down to where the boats where moored, but it looked like it wasn't the ones we were after. It was hydrofoils. Not sure where they were going, and there was no English spoken or written. So we set off for the Information centre. We also wanted to get information on the ballet. The lady at the info. Was very good, checked on 'Swan lake, and said there were 2 performances tonight, one at the hermitage which was nice and close, the other further away ...

... se e' notte fonda e anche se la temperatura non e' delle piu' miti. Entrambe le correnti di pensiero concordano pero' sulle calzature: sandali con i calzini, tassativamente! Io mi attengo al mainstream e opto per tuta e maglietta, ai sandali con un bel paio di calzini bianchi non posso proprio rinunciare. Secondo passo: cibo. Qualunque russo che viaggi su un treno sembra un bulimico: oltre a portarsi da casa scorte alimentari sufficienti per un anno in un rifugio ...

... it. Peter was also apparently trying to dispel superstitions people had about so-called "monsters" like these. He also sent explorers to the ends of the earth and assembled a pretty impressive anthropological collection of clothes and tools and things from China, India, North America, all over the world. All of the exhibits were titled in Russian, so we just did a lot of looking; I can't be very specific about what we saw. And we weren't the only ones ...

... of birds nests one can see perched in the birch trees. However, as we get closer to Khabarovsk, I noticed factories and garbage. We arrive at Khabarovsk train station at 8am local time and again are met with dreary Siberian weather (damp and clammy). We decide to walk to the hotel which was a bit challenging but we found it after about 30 minutes. We are staying at the Hotel Amethyst which is considered a boutique ...

... station, etc). We get back to the service center and find it still closed. I then heard a Russian guy speak Japanese to the sole Japanese person we saw on the whole trip and asked him what's the best way to buy the ticket in Japanese. He suggested we go directly to the ticket office. So that is where we went.. There were 3 different lines and we did not know where to queue so we chose the shortest line. After about 15 minutes ...

... swiming in the baltic sea in the evening time...it's just beautifull... Today i was with Karisha, and for her lunch break she took me to another roof by the river Neva about 60meters high, where you can see all the monuments, we had sandwich, yogurt, a little chat about life few pictures and she went back to work... The places closing now i have to go. The next will be very soon. See ya' :) www.grenius.com

... limit, but if you slipped a couple Euros to the guy at the bridge you could drive right in and park near the Cathedral. The funniest part about this was there were literally a dozen buses parked by the cathedral by the time we left and they all must have bribed the guy to get over! The cathedral is the resting place of many Russian Tsars and was stunning. They also had an area where the remains of the Romanovs (that were killed in the Bolshevik ...

... of amber, where the panelling was made out of, you guessed it real amber, and the Russians could not remove it when the Nazi's came as it would break, so it remained. The Nazi's however did remove it and now apparently the panels are lost somewhere in France. The room had been restored with real amber again but I think not all of the room was covered, and there is much less of it. Another room, the room of mirrors was best described as 'Grand' gold leafing and beautiful mouldings ...