Irkutsk and Lake Baikal

We arrived in Irkutsk to meet our guide Alex. He wanted to take us to a bank and then straight to lake Baikal. This was a nice idea but we had not eaten really food for two day and where all going crazy after the train ride with the border crossing from hell. i had eaten too much sugar and was losing the plot.

Alex could not be convinced so after watching for the money exchange office to open for 1,5 hours we started the bus ride to Lake Baikal. Our bus driver looked like the late Boris Yeltsin. I slept the whole way and woke to find us pulling up out the front of a very cute little wooden house.


After some more discussion we finally convinced Alex to let us eat some breakfast. We ate down on a deck by the lake. The lake was so big!


After lunch we went for a walk around the area. We were staying in Listvyanka which is lake Baikals most visited spot. We walked to the wooden cottage villages called krestovka and the Svyato Nikolskaza Church which was named after the apparition st Nicholas who saved the maker from a ship wreck in the lake.


After our walk we headed back to the hotel for some lunch. Lunch that day was a lovely 3 course meal cooked by the ladies at the hotel. It was great. We actually ate vegetables for the first time in ages and I began to feel better in no time. The food in Mongolia was very average! After lunch I went to bed as I did not get much sleep on the train as our cabin was the party cabin and no one would go back to their cabins when we got sleepy.

After a good night sleep and writing in my journal we had dinner. My life in Lake Baikal was all about food. That night we watched a DVD called "the Matador". The DVD player was really crap the movie kept stopping. After dinner I sat up and talked to Jenny for a few hours.