A day in Irkutsk

We woke up early Monday; it’s a holiday so we can’t go to the adoption center. From our apartment we can see the trolley so we decided to be adventurous and do some site seeing. We took the trolley to downtown Irkutsk which cost 6 rubles each, we figured that is about 22 cents. Downtown we walked all over, it is a really pretty town with some beautiful old buildings. We found the internet cafe after finally finding someone at a college who spoke English. We did not see any large department stores, just individual stores and kiosk type buildings that sell mostly food and alcohol. It took awhile but we finally found a sports bar and ordered ‘spicy’ wings. This was nothing like wings in the sports bars serve at home, we got 3 wings each and they tasted like Kentucky Fried Chicken crispy chicken. And the sports bar—not so sure why it is called a sports bar, it was a little fancy and had one TV. After eating we rode the trolley across the river to the end of the line at a large university. Riding back, we got off at the Trans Siberian Railway station. In the bathroom, you pay 5 rubles to get in and for a small piece of toilet paper. Most surprising was that the toilet was a porcelain hole in the floor and it was self flushing. Then we headed back late and got lost; neither of us thought to look at our apartment building. We showed the trolley ticket taker the address and he told us to get off in the wrong place. We asked directions several time, but no one spoke English; finally one lady said "come" and walked us to the right street and pointed us in the right direction where we finally recognized the front of the building. We had been walking around in circles for an hour. It was after 11pm when we got back and just getting dark.