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Live the adventures of Dan Walker's travels through reading his travel journal. The travel journals are listed below in descending order of date. To search the travel journals, use the keyword search at the bottom of the page.

Journal Entry:

Wednesday, January 21, 2015 01:07:26

RUSSIA & NEW YORK 2015: 4 Monchegorsk, Kirovsk & back to Murmansk, Russia

Saturday, January 17, 2015

At 10 AM we were picked up for the 2 hour drive south to Monchegorsk, with no one to help with the luggage. This area is not on the mainstream tourist route, and as a result people don't think of doing things to earn tips – most of those to whom I've offered tips turned them down unless I strongly insisted. Tipping in restaurants is not common either. Drivers are just drivers, and do nothing else unless agreed in advance. We had the same driver as yesterday, and I found him sitting in the car outside, so we hauled our luggage to the car, no offer of help. When we arrived our gear was unloaded at the town parking lot near the hotel, the driver pointed out the hotel and that was it, we were on our own. Fortunately Kola Travel had everything well organized and we were always expected.

We checked into the very nice Laplandia Hotel where we had a suite on the 9 th floor, overlooking a park with a giant illuminated Christmas tree. There was no one to help with luggage, but it was much easier with an elevator. The main square in front of the hotel has play houses made of ice and ice slides for the kids..

Were joined by a young English speaking guide and teacher, Alex, who was excellent at showing us around the small one industry city of about 40,000, both on foot and by taxi. The hotel restaurant was closed, so we ate at a nearby third story restaurant before going to the skating rink, which was closed until evening. The stone museum has well done displays of many mineral samples plus artwork made from colourful polished rocks.. We were joined here by a 14 year old school girl called Nasya, who was great with Marianne. School kids go to school 5 ½ days a week, Saturdays are from 8 AM until 2 PM. That would certainly horrify the Canadian school teachers who were on strike for much of last yea! She has 25 students in her class..

We taxied to the beautiful Russian Orthodox Cathedral, where Alex says all faiths in town come to pray. It was built after the end of the Soviet era in the early 1990s, but in the traditional style of the big historic cathedrals.

Back at the main city square we walked to a snowy park to see the famous moose statue that is the mascot of the city. There are ice and snow structures all over for kids to climb up, then slide down on plastic mats or inner tubes, and snow sculptures of Father Frost (Santa Clause) and others. One kind family loaned Marianne a "pancake", a round plastic disc with handles on the sides, so she could try out the slides. We took a taxi back to the hotel, as my knees were giving out. Alex was given a carte blanch to look after us by Kola Travel, and that included taxi fares.

Dinner was at the same third floor restaurant in the shopping centre where we had lunch. It is about half a block from the hotel. They have a great menu, and good drinks. I had a surprisingly good Mojito with fresh mint before sharing a bottle of wine with Marilynn.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

This morning's start was 9 AM for the hour and a half drive to the City of Kirovsk. A pre-packaged breakfast was in our room when we returned from dinner last night, as the hotel restaurant was closed. In Kirovsk we checked into the Severnaya Hotel. This is the best hotel yet – our one bedroom suite is beautifully done in wood panelling there was someone to take luggage to the room, and there is an elevator. Our fourth floor room has a view of the town, an industrial city and ski resort that claims the highest ski run north of the Arctic Circle.

We hired a taxi to take us to the Botanical Gardens, now under a lot of snow, to go horseback riding. We were very disappointed to find they don't rent horses, they just take children for a walk on a horse. We expected horses for the three of us, and were very much looking forward to a gallop through the snow. Marilynn walked after the horse to take photos, I stood at the entry gate and fumed until they were done.

We walked from there to a hotel for a good buffet lunch, then to the Snow Village where we had a voucher for the entrance and for a snow cube to carve. Snow village is really worth seeing. There is a massive structure made entirely of snow from ground to ceiling and it goes on for ages along interior snow corridors leading to many, many rooms with snow carvings in the walls and ceilings, many with special lighting effects. The theme was fairy tales and nursery rhymes, with hundreds of characters represented. It is amazing.

We met various Russian people and families as we worked our way through the complex, everyone taking lots of photos. One fellow asked me to take a photo of him with his friend at an ice desk, then pulled out a hip flask to offer us a drink of his whiskey, which definitely helped warm us from the inside. He is a bomber pilot in the Russian Strategic Air Command - they were good fun. We crossed paths with them several times.

Once through Snow City we took an exciting and exhilarating ride on a banana of the type towed by boats at seaside resorts, only this one was towed at high speed through snowy forest by a snow mobile. Marianne liked it so much that we later did it again!

We noticed a cube of snow about 10 feet high and 5 feet square sitting by the gift shop, and on enquiry found it was our cube to do a snow carving. We had expected something the size of a block of ice! We were issued two spades and some large chisels, and a young lady showed us how to get started. When asked what she wanted to carve, Marianne said a palm tree, so we started to try to convert this mass of snow into a tree. We had two sides looking pretty good before we gave it up.

The staff were super friendly and always willing to help out. When we asked a girl on staff to call us a taxi, she used her own cell phone to call, and a young man who worked there insisted on walking us some distance to where the taxi would come, and waited until to see us into the cab. They would absolutely not accept any tips.

At the hotel we had dinner and drinks in the well appointed bar, sitting by the gas fireplace, before going back to the room and falling into bed.

Monday, January 19, 2015

We discovered one disadvantage to the hotel last night, the heat was turned off and it was freezing cold. It came back on at 7 AM. We walked around town after breakfast before our driver took us back to Monchegorsk a little after noon. At the Laplandia Hotel we had the same room. Passports are required on check in for all hotels, and when we went to check in I found I didn't have them - they had not been returned by the hotel from last night. Fortunately Svetlana de Wit, who along with her husband own Kola Travel, came to the hotel to meet us at that moment, and arranged for the driver to go back and get them, a trip of 3 hours.

Lunch and dinner were in the same third floor restaurant as before. Marilynn & Marianne went for a walk after a trip to the supermarket to buy some Russian chocolate to try to duplicate the delicious local hot chocolate drinks she has enjoyed here, while I went to the room to sleep off lunch.

Later we met with Yaroslav Sakharov who is a speciality guide for fly fishing and northern lights. He has sophisticated programs on his computer that fairly accurately give the chances of seeing the lights. Marilynn and Marianne joined him for a drive out into the countryside at about 10:30 PM, where they saw the Aurora Borealis from horizon to horizon just as he had predicted. For questions on this or fly fishing for the big ones he can be contacted through Kola Travel. He speaks English well.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

The hotel had the restaurant open for breakfast so we ate before we were driven to a Sami Village. It was not a real Sami Village, more of a tourist set up, although it had authentic outhouses with a hole in the ground! We mingled with a herd of reindeer, feeding them bread. Some foxes and other small animals are kept in cages. We rode on a reindeer pulled sled again, and on a "banana" similar to the one at the Snow Village. There were totem poles with various gods and symbols plus photos of a functioning Sami camp. As they are nomads, the Sami don't usually have permanent villages. Lunch was a bowl of hot fish soup with bread. There was no one else there except the guide, who didn't speak a work of English, making conversation difficult. Today for the first time the sun struggled above the horizon for a couple of hours.

On arrival at the Ogni Hotel things were very different from the last time Two fellows carried luggage to the same room we had before, the extra mattress was still in place., and the receptionist was very friendly. We went for a swim in the hotel pool, actually more a complex of pools with jacuzzi jets, a water slide and a lap pool with a current generator to allow swimmers to stay in the same spot while swimming hard against the current.

We invited Anastasia and her husband for dinner at the hotel. It was lucky we did, as the menu had no pictures and is only in Russian. The staff spoke no English, so Anastasia looked after communications for all of us. The meal was good, and we had a good time discussing various things. Her husband is with a government department that is trying to promote regional tourism, so I stayed on after Marilynn and Marianne headed for bed, as the conversation was very interesting.

Tomorrow we are being picked up at the hotel at 3 AM for our transfer to the airport.