Lystvanka is a small villiage on the shores of Lake Baikal. It is a popular desitnation to see the lake. Lack of planing controls means that it's original architecture of quaint wooden houses is being slowly and inexorably displaced by ugly constructions of brick, though there are some attractive new wooden structures.
On Saturday 28th, we woke to a beautiful clear, cool day with distant mountains in the haze over a still lake. Breakfast was eggs & sausage, bread and blinis & jam. There is one other group here; three Canadians.
Rita's has WiFi, so we could use Skype and get this blog up to date. Katya picked us up at 11am and took us to the Museum of Wooden Architecture. Set in birch forest about 20 km from Lystvanka, this is a collection of wooden architecture from various places in Siberia, along with some recreations. It gives a good guide to the architecture of the pioneer times.
We had lunch there. Soup was solyanka (meat and vegatables), followed by pelmeni (meat dumplings) and blinis and honey. It was a good Russian lunch. After lunch, Katya returned us to Listyvanka.
After a brief rest, we set out to explore Lystvanka. The villiage is strung out along the lakeside, hemmed in by steep hills, with a couple of small creek valleys cutting back into the hills. The lake is very clear and quite cold. The narrow beach of pebbles is unimpressivve. Lots of people were out, taking in the sunshine and looking around. A couple of small markets sold tourist stuff and smoked or fresh local fish. A beer by the lakeside was welcome and very inexpensive at A$1.60 for a half-litre bottle.
We wandered through the villiage and called in on the local wooden Orhodox church. We caught about 10 minutes of the services in the small church, which internally was covered with paintings/icons. We went back to Rita's and found that our laundry was finished, so we are back to the full complement of clean washing that we started with a week ago.
We walked to Katya's recommended restaurant for dinner. This is a fish area, so we had a fish salad, followed by a fish main course (based on omul, the well-regarded local fish). In spite of our attempt to find wine everywhere, we deferred this time when we found the only wine on the menu was Asti Spumante at A$50 a bottle. After the mean, we strolled along the lake back to Rita's.
Tomorrow we leave, taking a ferry to Port Baikal to catch the CircumBaikal Railway back to Irkutsk.
On Saturday 28th, we woke to a beautiful clear, cool day with distant mountains in the haze over a still lake. Breakfast was eggs & sausage, bread and blinis & jam. There is one other group here; three Canadians.
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| Lunch time at the Museum of Wooden Architecture |
We had lunch there. Soup was solyanka (meat and vegatables), followed by pelmeni (meat dumplings) and blinis and honey. It was a good Russian lunch. After lunch, Katya returned us to Listyvanka.
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| An afgternoon beer on the Baikal lakeside |
We wandered through the villiage and called in on the local wooden Orhodox church. We caught about 10 minutes of the services in the small church, which internally was covered with paintings/icons. We went back to Rita's and found that our laundry was finished, so we are back to the full complement of clean washing that we started with a week ago.
We walked to Katya's recommended restaurant for dinner. This is a fish area, so we had a fish salad, followed by a fish main course (based on omul, the well-regarded local fish). In spite of our attempt to find wine everywhere, we deferred this time when we found the only wine on the menu was Asti Spumante at A$50 a bottle. After the mean, we strolled along the lake back to Rita's.
Tomorrow we leave, taking a ferry to Port Baikal to catch the CircumBaikal Railway back to Irkutsk.
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