11 April: Our guide, Sveta, picks us up at 11am. Our luggage will follow in another vehicle, we think. An hour later we are in Irkutsk with a couple of hours before check-in time at the Railway station. While everyone else explores a large market, I get inside a large parka with a fleece liner and stay in the van. The fever and chills are back. Even though the outside temperature is below freezing, the sun shining brightly on the van and shoppers moving lively in all directions make for a pleasant wait. Oh yes, Irkutsk looks much better on this sunny day than it did in the dreary drizzle of our arrival day.
Good-bye to Sveta and hello to Train #9 to Moscow. Three nights and four days westward will put us in the capital of this huge country. Our compartments are very nice, two berths and clean. There is a dining car and our car has a pay-shower — WONDERFUL!
The next four days we will be passing through rolling mostly flat forests; mostly birch and some pine with many lakes, much like northern Minnesota.
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Today we’re off to some markets and on to the train station. On our way back to Irkutsk, we stopped at the same little zoo the Johnson’s visited yesterday. Saw a BIG brown bear and a Mongolian Yak (hairy beast). We went into Irkutsk to do some shopping. Tried to go to a fur factory, but because it is owned by the government, it is only open Monday through Friday, and this is Saturday. We went on down to the main shopping market district. We passed the Chinese market and stopped at a department store district. Across the street were a few fur stores, so we checked them out. I trid on several jackets, a couple of which I really liked, but they were too small. We got on our train to Moscow at 4:00PM. I had a good supper of salad and soup. Nice day! Fran