Listvyanka and Lake Baikal

We arrived in Listvyanka around noon, via taxi. We’d thought to take a bus, but in the end allowed ourselves to be convinced by a taxi driver that we’d get there much faster if he took us. And we wanted to get there, drop our bags at our hotel, and explore the town. Listvyanka is on the shore of Lake Baikal, which is the largest and deepest freshwater lake in the world. According to Wikipedia, it contains “roughly 20% of the world’s unfrozen surface fresh water.”And all that water is clear, clean, and beautiful.

The drive from Irkutsk to Listvyanka took about an hour, maybe closer to 90 minutes. Steve and the taxi driver chatted away in the front, while I sat in the back and tried to follow the conversation as much as I could. (My Russian has about 10 years of rust on it, and needs some serious elbow grease to polish it up.) Their conversation ranged from pensions, to speeding tickets, to Russian-American politics during the years before I was born, to mushroom hunting, to the state of Lake Baikal, which is apparently a bit low this year. And probably a few other topics that I missed.

Meanwhile, I was keeping an eye on the scenery because it is very beautiful here. The trees seems even more colorful today than they did from the train yesterday, with yellows and reds mixed liberally with the green. White birch tree trunks stand tall amidst the color. It really is beautiful, though we didn’t stop and none of the pictures I tried to take through the window turned out well.

Our driver took us straight to our hotel, which I must say was much nicer than walking would have been–the hotel is a bit far from town, and up a hill. It was nice not to carry our bags, which we promptly abandoned in our rooms as we headed back to town in search of lunch.

We walked a lot this afternoon, probably about nine or ten miles along the shore of Lake Baikal. I didn’t take too many pictures, as the day was a bit overcast and things didn’t “pop” as much as I’d like in photos. But it was a lovely walk, full of good things.

We came back to our hotel earlier than usual, and here I sit updating posts and looking at pictures. The rest of this particular day in what photos I did take.

Taken on the walk down the hill from our hotel to the town. I really love the shutters. (Shortly after I took this I spotted a young girl peering at us through one of the windows. I hope she didn’t mind me taking a picture of her house.)

We spotted this absolutely gorgeous car as we were coming down the hill from the hotel. Against the lake it was especially spectacular.

As we were oohing and aahing over the beautiful car, I noticed this man eyeing us. “It’s a beautiful car,” the man yes. “Yes,” I replied. Is it yours?” And it was. He told us he’d done all the work on it himself, and was very proud of it. I think he liked to have it admired, for good reason.

Putting my fingers in Lake Bailkal. (And getting my jeans a bit wet, unfortunately.) The water wasn’t as cold as I expected it to be.

An interesting building….behind it you can spot the church, which looks quite small. (We did not stop for a closer look because we were intent on finding lunch.)

These two little sculptures were on the boardwalk along the lake.

A shot of the woods surrounding Lake Baikal. The colors are prettier than this photo shows.

Steve in the woods. We walked up a road to a hotel that had an ATM, then took a shortcut back down using a very neat boarded walkway. It had excellent views, and was clearly popular. (I got the impression that one of the overlooks was a popular hangout spot for the area youth.)

I’m not entirely sure what this was for, but it was beautifully carved. See the detail in the next photo.

Love this.

Walking along the shore.

Edited to add: Steve talks about Listvyanka in Change of plans.