- Packing
- A week of extremes
- Preparation
- Dress Rehearsal
- H6, #13, and Bo
- Vlotho
- Stockholm
- Tallinn
- Helsinki
- Helsinki II
- St. Petersburg
- St. Petersburg II
- Moscow
- Beijing
- Beijing II
- Beijing III
- Beijing IV
- Xi’an
- Xi’an II
- Shanghai
- Nara – Halfway plus one day
- Kyoto
- Back in the (Former) USSR
- Muroran
- 180th Meridian
- Seward
- Ketchikan
- Vancouver
- St Paul
- Chicago
- New York City
- North Atlantic
- 78 Days and 9 Minutes
- London
Greetings from Vladivostok. We docked early this morning and will be spending almost the entire day here. This morning we are running errands and will tour this afternoon. Russia is still chilly. While not as cold as it was when we left it previously, it is in stark contrast to the warmth we encountered in Japan and Korea.
Vladivostok, as well as being the eastern terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, is home to the Russian Pacific Fleet. Elements of this fleet are docked alongside our ship, making quite an impressive sight in the pre-dawn light. Being a military town, Vladivostok was a closed city, even to most Russians, until just about 10 years ago.
What I hope to be able to see here is the Naval Cemetery, containing the graves of some of those who fought in the Allied Intervention during the Russian Civil war. At that time, Vladivostok was captured by a US and Japanese force with the proclaimed intent of securing the port to evacuate the Czechoslovak Legion, who were fighting their way out of Russia eastward along the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The intent was to transport them to the Western Front, but World War One rapidly wound down and they were still trapped in Russia. The last Czech soldiers left in 1920 and the final Japanese troops pulled out just after that.
A consolation site is the statue of the three whales, commemorating the joint US-Russian force which freed three dumb whales trapped under the ice in the late 1980’s. This event generated my favorite quote about work, a quote I still use to this day.
Of all the places we have been, nothing has been a source of greater culture shock than our ship. The sum total of our ages (my beloved travel companion and mine) is the average age of the passengers on the ship, so much so that most of the crew thinks we are part of the crew. We also take it as a good sign that most everyone thinks we are on our honeymoon. Since my cold has gotten worse, everyone seems to think I am British, even the Europeans. That creates quite a “cover”.
We have also managed to regain all of the weight we have lost.
This entry was posted in Around the World
