Living in an Inside Cabin

Oct 25

Valdivostok

I’ve not been good about writing, I fear.  The lack of decent free internet has been surprising, especially in places like Shanghai and Hong Kong.  I find this causes me to put anything related to wireless in second place to exploring the area.  I’m thinking that this is a good thing, actually, but I feel like I should be keeping up some commentary for my friends and family.  We’ll see if I can do better as we go along.

Vladivostok Church

Our first landing port was Vladivostok in Russia.  Amazingly enough I was pleasantly surprised with this city.  I was expecting the stereotypic gray, ugly buildings and similarly dressed people.  I was way off base.  The Russian women are extremely fashion conscious and many of our own US stores are located in the city including Victoria Secret.  The buildings were getting power washed and the city is being cleaned up.  There is some interesting old architecture along side of the modern construction.  The harbor is huge and considering the city was sealed off from the world until 1991, the place has come a long way.

Mutton Stew

We enjoyed a wonderful meal of mutton stew and chicken with vegetables plus tongue salad along with the local vodka and a couple glasses of wine in a very local restaurant where we were the only foreigners.  The server had to go to the cooler to get the wine so we could choose red or white because our Russian and her English weren’t making it work.  But they had wifi!  You just never know.

My gourmet friend, Tunde