Ever heard of this place? I hadn’t. But now I have been there. I can’t believe people live here if they had the resources to move. But our tour guide was extremely good and proud of her city. She was completely fluent in English and she said also in Japanese. She was more fluent than any of our tour guides in Japan.
The most famous building in this city and the one in the best condition was the Russia Orthodox Cathedral. Gold everywhere inside and out.
And the painted ceiling was amazing.
But to me it was not my favorite Russian Orthodox Church in town. We went to an old wooden church named St. Nicholas. This church had this statue of St. Nicholas out front and a very special icon of St. Nicholas inside. St. Nicholas is the patron saint of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is also the same saint whose is buried in the St. Nicholas Catholic Basilica in Bari Italy where we were just last May. Tradition says all Russians should attempt to pilgrimage to Bari and pray at his shrine in Bari. I asked our guide and she confirmed this story and told us her mother is pushing her to take her there. If you haven’t heard the whole story of St. Nicholas just ask me some day. All I will say here is this is the same Saint Nicholas that we call Santa Claus. We bought a small copy of the icon.
The city is also famous for brown bears. Supposedly there are over 20,000 bears in the surrounding area. We did not see any. The guide told us that in the spring, like right now, they wake up and eat anything they can find like berries and ferns. Then for dessert they eat tourists! Whoops, not us thank goodness. But these bears don’t eat and are cute.
There is a memorial to the fallen from the local battle in the Crimea War of the 1850’s. The local battle was the only battle the Russians won in the entire war.
There was a great ski hill just out of town. Unfortunately it had just closed for the year. But look how much snow they still had. By the way it was cold today. The high temperature was about 40 degrees.
The city is mostly famous for hunting and fishing. And the most famous area in the Bering Straight just offshore is these three rocks. There picture is everywhere.
The next day at lunch the World Café (buffet) had a special dessert. A huge tiramisu. Yes Bob, Kathy and I hit it just for you.
Today is Tuesday May 14th. Tomorrow is Tuesday May 14th. Yes, your eyes are okay and I did type that. We cross the dateline tonight sometime. So we gain back the day we lost while flying to Auckland New Zealand in February. Soon we will be in Alaska but we are not ready to end this trip. Maybe in two weeks we will be.
Johnson's Travel 