What bliss! We had a lovely long lie this morning with breakfast at 9:30 pm. It was good one too!! Egg, sauseage, delicious tomatoes, cheese, rye bread, fresly squeezed apriocot/prune juice, coffee and a delicious little cinnamon cake!
After breakfast we went for a casual walk around town; down the main paved road around the lake, past the harbour and the tour boats, up towards the hills on a dirt road past tons of pretty little wooden homes with colourful and ornate window frames and shutters of different shades of blue, green, pink - and white, ornate roof styles. Then we arrived at the unique art gallery of Vladimir Plamenevsky (www.museum.ru/M2568). It is a quaint, and charming, wooden building showing the eclectic, and in some cases startling, works of about 50 Siberian artists. We walked back over the little stream rolling down to the lake, and on to some paths that took us to the Sryato-Nikolskaya Church. Very different from our churches, but small and sinmple and charming. I had to don a skirt and headscarf to go in, so I felt a little silly, but was totally moved by one young man in there praying who was sobbing so hard that his sadness filled the church. I felt my own eyes fill with tears, and was so consumed with his emotion I had to leave the church. No idea who he was, but I imagined that maybe he had lived there and either his parents/or wife's death, or some other life sadness was totally over-whelming him. We walked back to the main road and into a small cafe for coffee/tea and apple strudel. Ray and I went on and into the Mayak Hotel to use the deadly slow Internet to check our e-mail for an hour. We slowing walked back to the small fish market. We were passed by a guy and a young girl gallopping their horses carelessly down the paved main street, among many cars and Russian holiday makers. Seemed a little irresponsible to us!! In the market we had some barbecued skewers of chicken wings and pork with sour dough bread. Then we slowly walked back to the guest house and sat on the deck overlook the lake reading our books for a quiet afternoon. In the meantime, Chris, our tour leader took off to do some business in Irkutsk. We will meet him tomorrow in the train station.
At 7:30 pm we met Jon and walked down the narrow road leading from our guest house to the main road around the lake, turned right past a new aquarium with a seal show, and on to the harbour and a small cafe for dinner. It was really quiet, not much action at all, but the food was OK.
When we finished in the restaurant we strolled back to the guest house. Part of the way along the lake, a young girl (maybee 27/30) came up to us enthusiastically and asked if were tourists. At first, I thought this was a "pick-up" for Jon, but as she asked us to join her father in one of the wooden booths on the beach, I figured she was either completely innocent, or they were going to try and rob us!! Anyway, we walked down on to the pebbly beach and joined her father and 3 other young, rather strong looking men, one of whom looked really shifty! We declined a beer and some grilled fish and said we could only stay 5 minutes as we were meeting someone. I think it was all quite innocent and that she really only wanted to make contact with us and practice her English. It turned out that her boyfriend was a biathlete in cross country ski-ing and shooting. I think they had some sort of interior design business somewhere around. Anyway, they wanted to take us around etc. but of course we had no free time. We said our goodbyes, and went on our way to the chalet; sat outside for a short while with a tea/coffee and then went off to bed. It was still daylight at 10 pm and only just getting dark around 10:30/11:00 pm.
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