Things to see and do in Irkutsk

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Downtown Irkutsk

The next morning we woke up late. We decided to have an easy day. The weather had changed drastically. It had already been raining and it was very cold. We thought we'd stay indoors for a while. During the morning we sent emails to various people, I did a lot of word processing and we Skyped the kids. At that stage there were two boys from Finland staying at the hostel too.

 

Sightseeing in Irkutsk

After a while we felt hungry so we rugged up and headed out for a walk around the inner city area to see some sights. We found lots of unusual churches. The church in the photo on the right used to have a mural painted where the brown section of wall is now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We found a kiosk near a little square so we decided two salad rolls from the kiosk would be our lunch. It was quite odd to see the rolls (covered in cling film) getting placed in the microwave to be heated up.

They still tasted fine and we found they had chicken in them too which was a bonus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We wandered down by the river as the Finnish boys had said it was nice down there. To our surprise there were festivities underway with live music performances galore and people dressed up in fancy costume. We think they were celebrating the 650th anniversary of the city.

As you can see, the weather was very cold (for Australians, anyway) and miserably grey. It didn't seem to dampen the enthusiasm of those participating - some of whom were not wearing much clothing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A boy on his jumping contraption grabbed our attention. The boy in the photo to the left was jumping and bobbing around on this springy contraption he had strapped to his legs. He kindly stood still so we could photograph him

We saw young girls in very skimpy outfits who must have been freezing.

Masses of people were dressed up in fancy costumes. Tess the Tea Pot stood still for us to take a better photograph which was very kind.

We saw a huge number of police everywhere, just milling around or sitting in their cars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was still extremely cold so we headed back to the hostel for a hot cuppa and we Skyped our family again.

Re: ATM's in Irkutsk:

There are a several ATM's in the Admiral Hostel vicinity but we always ended up using those in the Hotel Angara which is located right next to the central square. We believe the ATM's in hotels and banks are safer than those out in the open. We found the one closest to the Chinese Restaurant (within the Angara Hotel) was set up to allow larger withdrawals than some of the others.

 

Next page - Listvyanka

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