Listvyanka

All of our stops appear to be crazy o’clock and pulling into Irkutsk is no exception.  We debark off the train at 4:25am, luckily being picked up straight away by the people we are staying with in Listvyanka which turns out to be a 45 min drive away to the 80s sounds of Sade . . .

Listvyanka is a small village on the edge of Lake Baikal which is the world’s largest freshwater lake, holding 20% of the world’s freshwater – a couple of free fact-ettes there!  We’d booked accommodation in these really cute little individual log cabins.  After taking a moment to luxuriate in the privacy, the fact that we had the space to open our suitcases and that we had a toilet that we didn’t  have to share and didn’t smell of wee, we promptly crashed out for a few hours.

Suitably freshed we obviously head out to look at the lake and walk along the lakeside to the centre of the village.  The ice is beginning to defrost on the lake, is apparently because it has been incredibly warm in Listvyanka.  Though by the time we get to Listvyanka it has most certainly reverted to cold, sunny but with a chilly wind which made it suitably refreshing to look at the intricate patterns the breaking ice made as well as listen to the unique twinkly, chinking sound of the shards of ice moving against one another.

Although at some point Alice got slightly bored of all the photograph taking . . .

We came across a market which sold an odd mixture of smoked (local fish) and souvenirs.  There must have been about 15 stalls all selling smoked fish to a handful of tourists.  We were slightly at a loss as to how this made sense, especially when we later saw several more people also selling smoked fish from outside their houses as we explored the village.

We were on our way to find something called Retro Park, but got a little lost on the way and ended up on the wrong side of the stream which was problematic as you can see from this photo . . . it eventually involved some daring walking across ice and crossing on a plank of wood . . .

We finally made it to Retro Park which had several models which were made solely out of old Communist car parts.  Twas pretty ingenious.