Irkutsk and Lake Baikal

We've been in Russia for a couple days now after crossing the border from Mongolia.  We've been learning the Cyrillic alphabet and trying our best to learn some Russian words as we've found little English so far.

Irkutsk is the capital of Eastern Siberia, and known as the "Paris of Siberia." It will celebrate it's 350th year as a city this summer.  It is a beautiful town filled with old wooden buildings, European architecture, restaurants, shops and even a great veg Indian restaurant that we've now eaten at twice.

One of the buildings downtown

We love the Russian Orthodox church architecture

We only stayed one night in Irkutsk then headed to Lake Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake in the world.  We initially wanted to head to the most popular tourist town about 70km from Irkutsk, but after our extremely helpful hostel manager found out, many of the rooms were already booked.  The hostel manager, Dmitri, then told us about his friend's hostel located further south on the lake in a tiny village of about 7 houses.  We said sure, so the next day Dmitri accompanied us to the hostel, which involved taking two trains.  It was beautiful.

The main building of the hostel

Siberian Friskey

View from the water

Jeff and Dmitri

Still ice at the lake's edge

View from behind the hostel

Train coming through town

View from a hike we took

We had an incredible experience staying there not only because it was beautiful, but also because staying at the hostel was like a homestay.  The hostel also serves as a summer camp for kids, so we ate meals with the staff, hung out with the great cats, and spent a few days just relaxing.

I've got a cat companion. Don't be jealous Spooky!