Vladivostok, Russia

So today is Day 4 here in Vladivostok and we don’t have much to report yet.

We’ve established contact with the Shipping Company and we have a Customs Agent. The boat still hasn’t arrived (we think) – we’ve been told various dates but the latest seems to be 30th March.

So far, we’ve been walking around Vladivostok, spending a lot of time trying to decipher things but thankfully the street names are both in Cyrillic and English. We’ve found a supermarket, a fresh food market and plenty of nice coffee shops.

Though breakfast is a bit of a hoot! You have a choice of apple or orange juice – only the apple juice is real, the orange juice is more like a made-up, weak orange drink. And coffee comes as hot water in a tea cup with a sachet coffee. For those of you who know us well, that is a REAL chore. Pastries full of cottage cheese, runny eggs sprinkled with PLENTY of dill and concrete bread also feature regularly.

So far, we’ve had Chinese and Italian for dinner and rediscovered our love of Blinies. Everyone seems to expect you to have them with coffee – hey, we’re happy to oblige!

Out the front of our hotel is Amur Bay, just north of the Sea of Japan, and every day there are people out there on the ice fishing! I mean, they just walk out there, or ride their bike on the ice out to their fishing hole and they have an ice drill (hand-powered) to clear out or cut a new fishing hole. The ice extends out into the Bay about 400m! I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be walking out there, given that it is supposed to be Spring, but overnight temperatures are still in the negative.

As we have to wait a few days, we’ve booked a couple of activities – this afternoon we’re off to Russian Island and on Sunday we’re going to a Safari Park and hopefully we’ll see some Tigers, which are the emblem of Primosky Region (Примо ский), which is where we currently are, and therefore they have statues of tigers everywhere! We can also expect to see Bears, Badgers, Deer & Squirrels.