There are still several parts of my Baikal trip I haven't written about, and, partly because it's interesting and partly because I will forget about certain elements of the trip if I don't write them down, here is another installment my Baikal travel notes.
Irkutsk is a really cool city and might actually be the second nicest city I've visited in Russia (St. Petersburg is definitely in first place). Irkutsk isn't really a big city; the population is somewhere around 600,000, which is like two Vladimirs, but it feels much bigger. It is and has long been an important political center and hub of commerce; the city's emblem pays homage to the sable, the animal whose pelts were Siberia's first great natural resource to be exploited on a massive scale. The city center is nice and well taken care of--the sidewalks are paved with bricks, there is decorative lighting, there are benches and decent looking trash cans (being in Russia makes one starve for the most mundane of amenities). The roads are also in excellent condition for Russia, and actually are on par with roads in the US; this is in contrast to Vladimir where your daily commute involves doing slalom to avoid the chasms that seemingly could swallow a Lada--or at least mangle a tire. There was even a new and fairly well designed town-center-style commercial area blended into the historic city center. My inner urban planner was feeling indulged.
Here are some pictures of Irkutsk:
Irkutsk is a really cool city and might actually be the second nicest city I've visited in Russia (St. Petersburg is definitely in first place). Irkutsk isn't really a big city; the population is somewhere around 600,000, which is like two Vladimirs, but it feels much bigger. It is and has long been an important political center and hub of commerce; the city's emblem pays homage to the sable, the animal whose pelts were Siberia's first great natural resource to be exploited on a massive scale. The city center is nice and well taken care of--the sidewalks are paved with bricks, there is decorative lighting, there are benches and decent looking trash cans (being in Russia makes one starve for the most mundane of amenities). The roads are also in excellent condition for Russia, and actually are on par with roads in the US; this is in contrast to Vladimir where your daily commute involves doing slalom to avoid the chasms that seemingly could swallow a Lada--or at least mangle a tire. There was even a new and fairly well designed town-center-style commercial area blended into the historic city center. My inner urban planner was feeling indulged.
Here are some pictures of Irkutsk:
Irkutsk's airport
Lenin Street
A big bank
The headquarters of a coal company
A fountain on a big square in the center of town
A statue of some dead guy--I can't remember who
The Angara River, which flows out of Lake Baikal
Where local kids gather
OK so not all of Irkutsk is shiny and new
It wouldn't be Russia without some military equipment sitting around
The main commercial street. It's closed to cars.
Some Russian ingenuity--using a radiator as a counterweight to hold a gate open
Lenin Street again
The city emblem in statue form. Note the sable in the lion's mouth
Ohh pedestrian-friendly commercial area ingrained into the fabric of the city--cool
Looks like a suburban American town-center-style mall thing. Well, sort of
"New City--a city in which expectations come to reality"
A statue to Kolchak, the one-time ruler of Siberia during the Russian civil war
A nice fountain
Tsar Alexander III
This embankment needs a little sprucing up, but it gets the job done
No comments:
Post a Comment