Our tour begins in Vladivostok

June 17, Monday.  Today we will board the train, but first we will tour the city of Vladivostok, located on the Far East coast of Russia.  It poured rain all night and in the morning, but despite predictions of rain all day, it began to clear in the late morning and turned into a lovely day. This is a very hilly city, and every bus route seemed to bring us back past our hotel, the same parts of the harbor, and other landmarks we recognized. We began our tour with a visit to an old submarine on the banks of the Golden Horn Bay in the midst of the dockage for the Russian fleet. It was interesting to see how small and cramped this old sub was.  I can't imagine going to sea in it, but obviously they did. 

This is the port on Golden Horn Bay with vessels from the Russian navy, including the commander's blue and white one.

The rusty old WWII submarine

Inside has been spiffed up

Controls--all mysterious to me!

Where the crew bunked

How you get from one section to the next.  You had better not be claustrophobic if you live on a submarine!

There was a nice war memorial in the same spot along with a pleasant little park with a statue dedicated to a mythological Russian protector, a small Orthodox Church, and a view of one of the new bridges we will see later today. 

The memorial and the church

Part of the war memorial

The park

The ancient protector of Russia

The small orthodox church nearby

The patron saint of the church.  I can't remember her name.

 

This arch was reconstructed nearby

We visited a fortress that was built underground, unlike most such defensive structures. The builders decided to utilize the hills of the city instead of building walls, so instead Vladivostok was defended by a series of well hidden subterranean fortifications connected by a labyrinth of tunnels. Our local guide, Olga, told us that when she was young, the children used to run all over the city through the tunnels. She said every one of Vladivostok's hills contains a hidden fortress below ground.

This is part of what shows above ground.  From the bay, this would be invisible even in this state,
and in fact, I think the entire site was covered by earth until it was excavated fairly recently.

A view of the city and Golden Horn Bay from the fortress site

Flowers grow here now

At the top of the site

The entrance to the museum that is inside the fortification now

Not taking any chances, an icon in the wall outside

This is the symbol of Vladivostok

Inside the museum is a series of connected rooms that were part of the original tunnel system

After lunch we drove across both new suspension bridges that were built just a couple of years ago for a big Pacific rim economic conference that was held in the city.  They and the roads leading to them have made a huge difference in traffic as well as enabling people who live on Russky Island to now work in the city. 

When we drove across the bridges, it was so foggy that we couldn't see one end from the other.

We ended our tour at the Eagles Nest observation point atop the highest hill in the city. From there we could look down on the bays that surround the peninsula, the waterfront area, Russky Island, and both new bridges, and even see the mountains that stand between Vladivostok and surprisingly nearby China. There was also a monument there to the two Greek monks who developed the Cyrillic alphabet. 

A view of one of the new bridges from the Eagle's Nest.  The fog is lifting a little bit.

Looking down on one of the fortified hilltops

St Cyril and St Methodius, credited with creating the cyrillic alphabet in the late 800's.
This monument was erected here because this is the easternmost place where cyrillic is still in use.

Late in the afternoon we were herded into a hotel conference room for an orientation about the train.  Finally, just as it started to pour rain and rush hour got into full swing, we left for the train station. We could almost see it from the hotel, and John and I had easily walked to it yesterday, but one way streets made our bus route circuitous and it took us over an hour to get there. The hidden benefit of the delay was that the rain stopped by the time we arrived at the station. As we walked from the bus up a flight of stairs and back down again, a band began to play a rousing version of Hello Dolly to welcome us. Our carriage attendants greeted us and led us to our cars, and at last we were aboard the Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express. 

Hello Dolly!

Cabin stewards greet us.  We were in carriage 8.

The Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express--our home for the next two weeks

 Happy though we were to be there, we struggled to find ways to store our stuff in our compartment. It is quite nice, but a train compartment is a small space. It took a couple of tries, but we managed, and now we are unpacked and settled for the next two weeks. Dinner was good, they seem able to manage vegans, and the food is quite nice. It doesn't hurt that the wine flows freely as well.

I took these photos near the end of our journey, so some of our "stuff" shows in them.  This is obviously the bathroom.

We were in a Gold compartment. That meant we had a bathroom with separate toilet, sink, and shower instead of marine style with the shower in the same space, separated only during use by a curtain.

This is OUR shower--its own separate space

The main living area includes a table, a sofa that pulls down into a bed, and an upper bunk you can see here folded up for daytime as the beige square in the upper righthand corner of the photo. It is reached using the ladder you can just barely see in the shower photo. The ladder hooks over the shower stall during the day and over the edge of the bunk at night.

The door to the corridor

The table and the small seat that is opposite the sofa.  The TV is used only for watching videos, of which there is a library on board.  There is no outside TV reception on the train--a blessed relief from watching the "news"!